To Barbara_

I see you’ll speak 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 there toward 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 admiring her own eyes
and rested gestures 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.