To Barbara
I see you’ll teach pre-Raphaelite to me
with words long cosseted away, such words
I’d thought were shot along the Somme.
I see your hair and think of “tress” and how
the poses those old painters loved are full of you
and how that curl along your back is why that dress.
I cannot picture what your softness could be for
But only for to warm my touch
which is no preface to another’s touch.
I picture how I’ll stop you on a stair
with all the others either up or down:
the party noises up, the kitchen noises down,
and on the landing in the moon-stare there
we’ll spiral inward to the secrets.
I learn “boudoir”, the room without a use
except the mirror, there to turn your gaze inside
and while you sit, “rondure” is what I name your back.
I’ll learn how woman is the sabbath of the world:
she has no use beyond her seeing her own eyes
and gestures resting in the mirrored light.
I see that we will make a son
and name him “laughter in the night”.
Do take this woman as your wife;
her yoke is easy, and her burden, slight.