Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother's bed; <br />the rising sun in war paint dyes us red; <br />in broad daylight her gilded bed-posts shine, <br />abandoned, almost Dionysian. <br />At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street, <br />blossoms on our magnolia ignite <br />the morning with their murderous five day's white. <br />All night I've held your hand, <br />as if you had <br />a fourth time faced the kingdom of the mad - <br />its hackneyed speech, its homicidal eye - <br />and dragged me home alive. . . . Oh my Petite, <br />clearest of all God's creatures, still all air and nerve: <br />you were in your twenties, and I, <br />once hand on glass <br />and heart in mouth, <br />outdrank the Rahvs in the heat <br />of Greenwich Village, fainting at your feet - <br />too boiled and shy <br />and poker-faced to make a pass, <br />while the shrill verve <br />of your invective scorched the traditional South. <br /> <br />Now twelve years later, you turn your back. <br />Sleepless, you hold <br />your pillow to your hollows like a child, <br />your old-fashioned tirade - <br />loving, rapid, merciless - <br />breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head.<br /><br />Robert Lowell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/man-and-wife/
