To Have Without Holding
Marge Piercy
Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.
It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.
It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.
I can't do it, you say it's killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.
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2 comments:
I'm glad you liked the poem. In a Question and Answer thread on Integral Naked, I asked Robert Augustus Masters what he thought of this poem – my question was
I find the stance the poem appears to be advocating both challenging and compelling. (At first I thought it was advocating polyamory but currently see it as potentially describing “conscious monogamy” as well.) It speaks to me of deeply bonding and committing fully to someone while fully respecting their autonomy, as well as realizing to your core that anything can change – that if you truly love that person you need to allow them room to change and grow, be and become as they need to do, even if that means the loss or change of the relationship you've committed to; as opposed to consciously or unconsciously attempting to limit or contain them.
This poem has been caroming around inside me, cross-breeding with your comments on immature monogamy, mature monogamy and polyamory, so I'm curious...what are your thoughts and feelings on this poem and my subsequent musings? How does this fit with what you've been saying on the subject of relationships?
Robert replied,
A beautiful, raw-hearted poem...The pain she describes so well appears to be arising, in part, through her repeated opening to being in an “open” relationship, but it also applies to the pain that comes with fully opening to love’s demands, whatever the context may be.
To open to deep relationship is not only to open to deep love, but also to open to the inevitable pain of such relationship. Real love does not remove us from hurt, but rather opens us so wide and deep that we make room for it. The stretching implicit in this sometimes hurts like hell; all we can do then is not turn our pain into suffering. The very hurt that arises through deep relationship can, if embraced, break our heart open to a deeper life. Fierce grace.
~~~~~
This had followed on early questions relating to different kinds of relationships, such as monogamy and polyamory.
arthur
it's disgusting and the poet fool.for a greek student is difficult to understandable
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