His first infidelity was a mistake, but not as big <br />As her false pregnancy. Later, the boy found out <br /> <br />He was born three months earlier than the date <br />On his birth certificate, which had turned into <br />A marriage license in his hands. Had he been trapped <br />In a net, like a moth mistaken for a butterfly? <br />And why did she--what was in it for her? <br />It took him all this time to figure it out. <br />The barroom boast, "I never had to pay for it," <br />Is bogus if marriage is a religious institution <br />On the operating model of a nineteenth-century factory. <br />On the other hand, women's lot was no worse then <br />Than it is now. The division of labor made sense <br />In theories developed by college boys in jeans <br />Who grasped the logic their fathers had used <br />To seduce women and deceive themselves. <br />The pattern repeats itself, the same events <br />In a different order obeying the conventions of <br />A popular genre. Winter on a desolate beach. Spring <br />While there's snow still on the balcony and, <br />In the window, a plane flies over the warehouse. <br /> <br />The panic is gone. But the pain remains. And the apple, <br />The knife, and the honey are months away.<br /><br />David Lehman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/twelfth-night/
