My wife, to whom I’ve been married since 1955, rather ruefully says now and again that I don’t seem to have written any real love poems for her, or not for a very long time. Here’s about as close as I can get to a love poem. (She does like this one.)
Together, Apart
Too much together, or too much apart:
This is one problem of the human heart.
Thirty-five years of sharing day by day
With so much shared there is no need to say
So many things: we know instinctively
The common words of our proximity.
Not here, you’re missed; now here, I need to get away,
To make some portion separate in the day.
And not belongong here, I feel content
When brooding on the portion that is spent.
Where everything is strange, and yet is known,
I sit under the trees and am alone,
Until there is an emptiness all round,
Missing your voice, the sweet habitual sound
Of our own language. I walk back to our room
Through the great park’s descending evening gloom,
And find you there, after these hours apart,
Not having solved this question of the heart.
