Weekly Poems: Proverbs on Marriage, Sex, and Love, and More
ON MARRIAGE, SEX, AND LOVE
1. One needs always to remember that the point of marriage is not sex but love.
2. Love, like the air, is often taken for granted. But a happily married couple both know that they need love and are grateful to have it.
3. Sex brings ecstasy and then satisfaction. Love brings grace and then fulfillment.
4. One can enjoy both sex and love, but one cannot pursue both. For the pursuit of sexual ecstasy is self-centered and tends towards isolation, whereas the pursuit of love is other-centered and tends towards communion.
5. Marriage is difficult and requires constant compromise. One cannot share a life without losing autonomy, but what one gains is well worth the loss.
6. The only way to be completely autonomous is to be completely alone.
TWENTY-TWO YEARS LATER THEY WERE DEAD
Twenty-two years later they were dead
And nothing was resolved, nor would it be.
Life, as is its wont, had gone ahead,
But both of them, though freed, were never free.
Both remarried, loved, fell ill, and died,
Buried separately, with space reserved
For those who mourned them most, the two outside
What once was home but could not be preserved.
What bitterness and blame, forgiveness, rage,
Guilt, shame, fury, impotence, and sorrow
Sloshed against the walls of each’s cage,
A storm that never yielded to tomorrow.
How beautiful and sad, the love of youth
That, though it could not last, outlasts the truth.
THE PAST IS LIKE A SCULPTURE
The past is like a sculpture:
Cold, unyielding stone,
Shaped in all the heat of life
But now best left alone.
If you’d like to look at it,
I’m sure that you will see
Someone somewhat similar,
But not the same as me.
The difference is in loving you,
Which changes sex to light,
From ego-driven ecstasy
To mutual delight;
From self-consuming pleasure
That can the self destroy,
To self-surpassing tenderness,
And joy in giving joy.
I am no longer who I was,
But am completely yours
In all my passion and desire,
In all that faith restores;
So do not turn away from me,
Jealous of the past,
And we in our embrace shall dance
To music that will last.
I MISS YOUR LAUGHTER, FUN, AND GENTLENESS
I miss your laughter, fun, and gentleness.
I miss the things I used to do for you.
I miss the time, now filled with emptiness,
When each day was a stage for something new.
I miss your love, though mine for you remains,
A passion with no outlet to the sea,
A teardrop in a desert, that contains
What’s left of my maternal ecstasy.
I miss your presence, like a silent chord
That anchored even solitude in grace.
I miss, for my love’s labor, the reward
Of seeing some small pleasure in your face.
All these I miss, and yet they are all here
Within my heart, far more than I can bear.
CAROL YAMAOKA
Carol Yamaoka
Loves to karaoke,
Swinging to the music of the spheres.
She’s a lovely mother,
You would want no other;
That is, if you like to hold your ears.
PROVERBS ON MARRIAGE
1. Romantic love is a lightning bolt. Married love is an electric current.
2. Marriage is a mirror in which one sees a reflection of oneself.
3. The source of joy, in marriage as in lovemaking, is union with another. That is why, while there may be pleasure in purchased sex, there is little joy.
4. Similarly in marriage: when love is mutual, joy bubbles over onto all of life; when it is not, nothing is untouched by sadness.
5. In a good marriage one is continuously in love, regardless of anger, hurt, or the longing to be free. The trick is to be aware of it.
6. In time, one may resent the permanence of one’s spouse almost as much as one relies on it.
7. That is why married couples bicker over trivia. For what is annoying at the moment is insufferable over a lifetime.
8. The hatred in a divorce is directly proportional to the love in the marriage, since only a strong hatred can sever a strong love and set the wounded free.
9. Marriage is a bulwark against time. For time is the measure of change, and in marriage two vow never to change.
10. In the end, of course, like the sea to a sandcastle, time sweeps over marriage, whether through death or betrayal. The bit of respite marriage affords is, however, all the Eden one needs for happiness. Or is likely to get.
THERE ARE TIMES THE SEA IS SULLEN RAGE
There are times the sea is sullen rage,
And all the wind can carry is despair.
The morning barely brightens the dark air,
And life is what no comfort can assuage.
There is pain too pure for any sage,
When breath is what precisely is not fair,
And hope seems hopelessly beyond repair,
Unlikely to recover much with age.
Ah, then, sweet child, know that you are loved
Simply for the glory of your being,
Regardless what you think or say or do!
This is a gift that cannot be removed,
A passion for a passion beyond seeing
That waits within the darkness just for you.
- Nicholas Gordon
