The beloved doesn't
need to live. The beloved
lives in the head. The loom
is for the suitors, strung up
like a harp with white shroud-thread.
He was two people.
He was the body and voice, the easy
magnetism of a living man, and then
the unfolding dream or image
shaped by the woman working the loom,
sitting there in a hall filled
with literal-minded men.
As you pity
the deceived sea that tried
to take him away forever
and took only the first,
the actual husband, you must
pity these men: they don't know
what they're looking at;
they don't know that when loves this way
the shroud becomes a wedding dress.
-Louise Glück
2 comments:
Second to last line -- missing an apostrophe?
Perhaps, dear Anonymous. I transcribed it out of one of my old notebooks. Do you have an officially printed copy? Mine's up North. Can't find it online.
So hard to respond to you like this, though.
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