Love and Work

Source: The Helen Brown Group

In an uncurtained room across the way
a woman in a tight dress paints her lips
a deeper red, and sizes up her hips
for signs of ounces gained since yesterday.

She has a thoughtful and a clever face,
but she is also smart enough to know
the truth: however large the brain may grow,
the lashes and the earrings must keep pace.

Although I’ve spread my books in front of me
with a majestic air of I’ll show her,
I’m much less confident than I’d prefer,
and now I’ve started pacing nervously.

I’m poring over theorems, tomes and tracts.
I’m getting ready for a heavy date
by staying up ridiculously late.
But a small voice advises, Face the facts:

go on this way and you’ll soon come to harm.
The world’s most famous scholars wander down
the most appalling alleyways in town,
a blond and busty airhead on each arm.

There is an inner motor known as lust
that makes a man of learning walk a mile
to gratify his raging senses, while
the woman he can talk to gathers dust.

A chilling vision of the years ahead
invades my thoughts, and widens like a stain:
a barren dance card and a teeming brain,
a crowded bookcase and an empty bed...

What if I compromised? I’d stay up late
to hone my elocutionary skills,
and at the crack of dawn I’d swallow pills
to calm my temper and control my weight,

but I just can’t. Romantics, so far gone
they think their loves live for wisdom, woo
by growing wiser; when I think of you
I find the nearest lamp and turn it on.

Great gods of longing, watch me as I work
and if I sprout a martyr’s smarmy grin
please find some violent way to do me in;
I’m burning all these candles not to shirk

a night of passion, but to give that night
a richly textured backdrop when it comes.
The girl who gets up from her desk and dumbs
her discourse down has never seen the flight

of wide-eyed starlings from their shabby cage;
the fool whose love is truest is the one
who knows a lover’s work is never done.
I’ll call you when I’ve finished one more page.

~ Rachel Wetzsteon

Love and Work

Source: The Helen Brown Group

In an uncurtained room across the way
a woman in a tight dress paints her lips
a deeper red, and sizes up her hips
for signs of ounces gained since yesterday.

She has a thoughtful and a clever face,
but she is also smart enough to know
the truth: however large the brain may grow,
the lashes and the earrings must keep pace.

Although I’ve spread my books in front of me
with a majestic air of I’ll show her,
I’m much less confident than I’d prefer,
and now I’ve started pacing nervously.

I’m poring over theorems, tomes and tracts.
I’m getting ready for a heavy date
by staying up ridiculously late.
But a small voice advises, Face the facts:

go on this way and you’ll soon come to harm.
The world’s most famous scholars wander down
the most appalling alleyways in town,
a blond and busty airhead on each arm.

There is an inner motor known as lust
that makes a man of learning walk a mile
to gratify his raging senses, while
the woman he can talk to gathers dust.

A chilling vision of the years ahead
invades my thoughts, and widens like a stain:
a barren dance card and a teeming brain,
a crowded bookcase and an empty bed...

What if I compromised? I’d stay up late
to hone my elocutionary skills,
and at the crack of dawn I’d swallow pills
to calm my temper and control my weight,

but I just can’t. Romantics, so far gone
they think their loves live for wisdom, woo
by growing wiser; when I think of you
I find the nearest lamp and turn it on.

Great gods of longing, watch me as I work
and if I sprout a martyr’s smarmy grin
please find some violent way to do me in;
I’m burning all these candles not to shirk

a night of passion, but to give that night
a richly textured backdrop when it comes.
The girl who gets up from her desk and dumbs
her discourse down has never seen the flight

of wide-eyed starlings from their shabby cage;
the fool whose love is truest is the one
who knows a lover’s work is never done.
I’ll call you when I’ve finished one more page.

~ Rachel Wetzsteon

Born Yesterday

Credit: PatriciaEGreen2@Morguefile

For Sally Amis

Tightly-folded bud,
I have wished you something
None of the others would:
Not the usual stuff
About being beautiful,
Or running off a spring
Of innocence and love —
They will all wish you that,
And should it prove possible,
Well, you’re a lucky girl.

But if it shouldn’t, then
May you be ordinary;
Have, like other women,
An average of talents:
Not ugly, not good-looking,
Nothing uncustomary
To pull you off your balance,
That, unworkable itself,
Stops all the rest from working.
In fact, may you be dull —
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised, enthralled
Catching of happiness is called.

~ Philip Larkin

Born Yesterday

Credit: PatriciaEGreen2@Morguefile

For Sally Amis

Tightly-folded bud,
I have wished you something
None of the others would:
Not the usual stuff
About being beautiful,
Or running off a spring
Of innocence and love —
They will all wish you that,
And should it prove possible,
Well, you’re a lucky girl.

But if it shouldn’t, then
May you be ordinary;
Have, like other women,
An average of talents:
Not ugly, not good-looking,
Nothing uncustomary
To pull you off your balance,
That, unworkable itself,
Stops all the rest from working.
In fact, may you be dull —
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised, enthralled
Catching of happiness is called.

~ Philip Larkin

The Bangle Sellers

Painting by Gopal Swami Khetanchi, showcased at All India Arts

Bangle sellers are we who bear
Our shining loads to the temple fair...
Who will buy these delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
For happy daughters and happy wives.

Some are meet for a maiden's wrist,
Silver and blue as the mountain mist,
Some are flushed like the buds that dream
On the tranquil brow of a woodland stream,
Some are aglow with the bloom that cleaves
To the limpid glory of new born leaves

Some are like fields of sunlit corn,
Meet for a bride on her bridal morn,
Some, like the flame of her marriage fire,
Or, rich with the hue of her heart's desire,
Tinkling, luminous, tender, and clear,
Like her bridal laughter and bridal tear.

Some are purple and gold flecked grey
For she who has journeyed through life midway,
Whose hands have cherished, whose love has blest,
And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
And serves her household in fruitful pride,
And worships the gods at her husband's side.

~ Sarojini Naidu

The Bangle Sellers

Painting by Gopal Swami Khetanchi, showcased at All India Arts

Bangle sellers are we who bear
Our shining loads to the temple fair...
Who will buy these delicate, bright
Rainbow-tinted circles of light?
Lustrous tokens of radiant lives,
For happy daughters and happy wives.

Some are meet for a maiden's wrist,
Silver and blue as the mountain mist,
Some are flushed like the buds that dream
On the tranquil brow of a woodland stream,
Some are aglow with the bloom that cleaves
To the limpid glory of new born leaves

Some are like fields of sunlit corn,
Meet for a bride on her bridal morn,
Some, like the flame of her marriage fire,
Or, rich with the hue of her heart's desire,
Tinkling, luminous, tender, and clear,
Like her bridal laughter and bridal tear.

Some are purple and gold flecked grey
For she who has journeyed through life midway,
Whose hands have cherished, whose love has blest,
And cradled fair sons on her faithful breast,
And serves her household in fruitful pride,
And worships the gods at her husband's side.

~ Sarojini Naidu

The Sensible Girlfriend

Photo credit: missymax from morguefile.com

for C.

Like shoes
she chose for comfort,
not for style,
that fit her contours
without chafe
or blistering

Here is sanity.
It took her years to arrive,
like an explorer
settling at last
into uneasy retirement,
a small cottage
at the edge of the sea.
How the breakers crash
against the underpinnings;
still, the walls hold firm.
Hearth blazing steadily,
she tries to warm to it

tells herself
she is mature now,
this is good.
The days of stalking,
done,
the rabid pulse,
the blood-drenched kisses,
all behind her now.
Wearied, finally,
of careless cruelties,
she will stay here,
grow old

with you.
And, sensible,
lacking her gift
for self-deception,
you know she struggles
with devotion,
you listen as she
moans inside her dreams,
and watch, without remarking,
as she tracks the tap of high heels
just beyond the window,
their rhythm growing fainter
with each step.

~ Terry Wolverton

The Sensible Girlfriend

Photo credit: missymax from morguefile.com

for C.

Like shoes
she chose for comfort,
not for style,
that fit her contours
without chafe
or blistering

Here is sanity.
It took her years to arrive,
like an explorer
settling at last
into uneasy retirement,
a small cottage
at the edge of the sea.
How the breakers crash
against the underpinnings;
still, the walls hold firm.
Hearth blazing steadily,
she tries to warm to it

tells herself
she is mature now,
this is good.
The days of stalking,
done,
the rabid pulse,
the blood-drenched kisses,
all behind her now.
Wearied, finally,
of careless cruelties,
she will stay here,
grow old

with you.
And, sensible,
lacking her gift
for self-deception,
you know she struggles
with devotion,
you listen as she
moans inside her dreams,
and watch, without remarking,
as she tracks the tap of high heels
just beyond the window,
their rhythm growing fainter
with each step.

~ Terry Wolverton

What Are Big Girls Made Of?

Photo credit: sante1 from morguefile.com

The construction of a woman:

a woman is not made of flesh

of bone and sinew

belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.

She is manufactured like a sports sedan.

She is retooled, refitted and redesigned

every decade.

Cecile had been seduction itself in college.

She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,

her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed

in the dark red lipstick of desire.

She visited in '68 still wearing skirts

tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,

while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,

lipstick pale as apricot milk,

hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear,

I thought in my superiority of the moment,

whatever has happened to poor Cecile?

She was out of fashion, out of the game,

disqualified, disdained, dis-

membered from the club of desire.

Look at pictures in French fashion

magazines of the 18th century:

century of the ultimate lady

fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.

Paniers bring her hips out three feet

each way, while the waist is pinched

and the belly flattened under wood.

The breasts are stuffed up and out

offered like apples in a bowl.

The tiny foot is encased in a slipper

never meant for walking.

On top is a grandiose headache:

hair like a museum piece, daily

ornamented with ribbons, vases,

grottoes, mountains, frigates in full

sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy

of a hairdresser turned loose.

The hats were rococo wedding cakes

that would dim the Las Vegas strip.

Here is a woman forced into shape

rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:

a woman made of pain.

How superior we are now: see the modern woman

thin as a blade of scissors.

She runs on a treadmill every morning,

fits herself into machines of weights

and pulleys to heave and grunt,

an image in her mind she can never

approximate, a body of rosy

glass that never wrinkles,

never grows, never fades. She

sits at the table closing her eyes to food

hungry, always hungry:

a woman made of pain.

A cat or dog approaches another,

they sniff noses. They sniff asses.

They bristle or lick. They fall

in love as often as we do,

as passionately. But they fall

in love or lust with furry flesh,

not hoop skirts or push up bras

rib removal or liposuction.

It is not for male or female dogs

that poodles are clipped

to topiary hedges.

If only we could like each other raw.

If only we could love ourselves

like healthy babies burbling in our arms.

If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed

to need what is sold us.

Why should we want to live inside ads?

Why should we want to scourge our softness

to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?

Why should we punish each other with scorn

as if to have a large ass

were worse than being greedy or mean?

When will women not be compelled

to view their bodies as science projects,

gardens to be weeded,

dogs to be trained?

When will a woman cease

to be made of pain?

~ Marge Piercy

What Are Big Girls Made Of?

Photo credit: sante1 from morguefile.com

The construction of a woman:

a woman is not made of flesh

of bone and sinew

belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.

She is manufactured like a sports sedan.

She is retooled, refitted and redesigned

every decade.

Cecile had been seduction itself in college.

She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,

her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed

in the dark red lipstick of desire.

She visited in '68 still wearing skirts

tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,

while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,

lipstick pale as apricot milk,

hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear,

I thought in my superiority of the moment,

whatever has happened to poor Cecile?

She was out of fashion, out of the game,

disqualified, disdained, dis-

membered from the club of desire.

Look at pictures in French fashion

magazines of the 18th century:

century of the ultimate lady

fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.

Paniers bring her hips out three feet

each way, while the waist is pinched

and the belly flattened under wood.

The breasts are stuffed up and out

offered like apples in a bowl.

The tiny foot is encased in a slipper

never meant for walking.

On top is a grandiose headache:

hair like a museum piece, daily

ornamented with ribbons, vases,

grottoes, mountains, frigates in full

sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy

of a hairdresser turned loose.

The hats were rococo wedding cakes

that would dim the Las Vegas strip.

Here is a woman forced into shape

rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:

a woman made of pain.

How superior we are now: see the modern woman

thin as a blade of scissors.

She runs on a treadmill every morning,

fits herself into machines of weights

and pulleys to heave and grunt,

an image in her mind she can never

approximate, a body of rosy

glass that never wrinkles,

never grows, never fades. She

sits at the table closing her eyes to food

hungry, always hungry:

a woman made of pain.

A cat or dog approaches another,

they sniff noses. They sniff asses.

They bristle or lick. They fall

in love as often as we do,

as passionately. But they fall

in love or lust with furry flesh,

not hoop skirts or push up bras

rib removal or liposuction.

It is not for male or female dogs

that poodles are clipped

to topiary hedges.

If only we could like each other raw.

If only we could love ourselves

like healthy babies burbling in our arms.

If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed

to need what is sold us.

Why should we want to live inside ads?

Why should we want to scourge our softness

to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?

Why should we punish each other with scorn

as if to have a large ass

were worse than being greedy or mean?

When will women not be compelled

to view their bodies as science projects,

gardens to be weeded,

dogs to be trained?

When will a woman cease

to be made of pain?

~ Marge Piercy