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grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!

And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him

When are you going to stop people killing whales!

And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle

Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust—

Yet if I should get married and it’s Connecticut and snow

and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,

up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,

finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man

knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin

soup—

O what would that be like!

Surely I’d give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus

For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records

Tack Della Francesca all over its crib

Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib

And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I’d be that kind of father

not rural not snow no quiet window

but hot smelly tight New York City

seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls

a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!

And five nose running brats in love with Batman

And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired

like those hag masses of the 18th century

all wanting to come in and watch TV

The landlord wants his rent

Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus

Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking—

No! I should not get married I should never get married!

But—imagine If I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman

tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves

holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other

and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window

from which we could see all of New York and ever farther on

clearer days

No, can’t imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream—

O but what about love? I forget love

not that I am incapable of love

it’s just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes—

I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother

And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible

And there’s maybe a girl now but she’s already married

And I don’t like men and—

but there’s got to be somebody!

Because what if I’m 60 years old and not married,

all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear

and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible

then marriage would be possible—

Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover

so I wait—bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

From The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,

By just exchange one for the other given.

I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss:

There never was a better bargain driven.

His heart in me keeps me and him in one;

My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides;

He loves my heart, for once it was his own;

I cherish his, because in me it bides.

His heart his wound receivèd from my sight;

My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;

For as from me on him his hurt did light,

So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart;

Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss:

My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

To My Dear and Loving Husband

ANNE BRADSTREET