5 Songs of Marriage

Erik Peeters

1.
A strange rage boils inside of me,
a rage at you.
Why you? Why rage?
Haven’t we been married for too short a time?
Shouldn’t rage be reserved for those tied together for endless eons?

How easy it is for hurt and indignation to pile up.
Kindness and goodness never gather in half a pile as high.

2.
Sometimes I find myself
trying to express what it is I see in you.
And then I find I’m lost for words,
stuck, with nothing left to say.
Is it because there are no words,
no expressions to be found for what I feel?
Or is it, as I think you would agree,
that I don’t want myself to feel
at all?

3.
A hunter in the green moss,
his eyes fixed only on the prey,
forgets most days what it was
that should have made him stay.
Stay where, my love?
Stay why?
I hunt only. I seek.
I do not tie myself
to anyone, you see?

4.
Poets sing of love, it’s true.
They sing of beauty and the night.
What songs should I then sing of you?

Love is hope —
the hope that we may prove
strong enough, and brave, to love,
and do so honestly.
Love is patience —
patience that we need to have
with our own feebleness in love,
and the dire lack of our resolve.
Love is kindness —
the kindness to forgive each other
for how short it is we fall
of our childhood dream ideal
of nobleness and truth in love.
Love is humility —
the realisation that it is not we
who granted us the strength to fall in love,
but that love is but a present to us from above.
Love is remorse —
remorse we feel at having let our mouths
be carried further than our hearts would go,
and allowed quick temper to speak first.
Love is the despairing hand we reach across the widening abyss as our own
hearts contemptuously drive us away from whom we love. Love is the wild
strong stallion inside of us trying desperately to remain, stand still.
Love
is the lone wolf within me trying to pretend domestication, and the wild
adventurer trying to sing the praise of home and hearth.

5.
Lay your left hand upon my shoulder-blade,
and rest your breath upon my cheek.
Gently brush your hand across
my chest and belly to my knees.
Let me lie so, restful now,
my right arm wrapped around your back,
your warm soft skin beneath my hand,
I feel against my skin, so warm,
the roundness of your breast.
Thus, I experience you briefly,
for a moment’s rest.
It is a moment only,
stolen from the inexorable march of time,
yet it is a moment also
stolen just for you and me.

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