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
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
(e.e. cummings)
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
To be lost in a forest, to be cut adrift
25 College Street
My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else - The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you again[s]t the unpromising morning of my Life - My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my Life seems to stop there - I see no further.
You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving - I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love - You note came in just here - I cannot be happier away from you - ‘T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles.
Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion - I have shudder’d at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr’d for my Religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet - You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more - the pain would be too great - My Love is selfish - I cannot breathe without you.
Yours for ever
John Keats
To Fanny Brawne, 13 October 1819 (John Keats)
I can’t imagine a modern equivalent to something like this. Surely there are great displays of love, of beauty and all that. No question about it. Maybe in music?
Still, I just read something like this and I think to myself, maybe the reason everyone is always in such a hurry to settle down with anybody, is the sliver of possibility that they could be loved this much by someone else.
You have to wonder at point she ceased to be a real thing and instead some sort of fantasy? I have a hard time comprehending a story like this in a world where it seems love has gone the way of the dodo. At least, a love communicated in this manner.
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.
