A Draft of a Marriage Contract (Vera Pavlova)
…if necessary, the books shall be divided as follows:
you get the odd, I get the even pages;
“the books” are understood to mean the ones we used to read aloud
together, when we would interrupt our reading for a kiss,
and would get back to the book after half an hour…
*
Inseparable: the parrot and its mirror,
Narcissus and his stream.
Here, I have made duplicate keys
to Eden, had the white dress altered.
Inseparable: Robinson Crusoe and Friday,
the dots in the umlaut,
me and you, my Sunday.
*
Teeth dull, veins collapsed,
heels worn down.
We are young as long as
our parents are young.
Dry is the riverbed where milk and honey,
white and amber, had run.
In the hospital, comb your mother’s hair,
clip the yellow nails.
*
Picking a sleepy kid
off the potty at night:
the kid’s limbs
a foal’s,
a Christ’s,
long and scrawny
in the dim light.
A Pieta.
91 (Vera Pavlova)
dropped
and falling
from such
heights
for so
long
that
maybe
I will have
enough time
to learn
flying
If There Is Something To Desire: One Hundred Poems (Pavlova)
Why is the word yes so brief?
It should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that you could not decide in an instant to say it,
so that upon reflection you could stop
in the middle of saying it.
I loved you once: perhaps that love has yet
To die down thoroughly within my soul;
But let it not dismay you any longer;
I have no wish to cause you any sorrow.
I loved you wordlessly, without a hope,
By shyness tortured, or by jealousy.
I loved you with such tenderness and candor
And pray God grants you to be loved that way again.
