"Men Marry What They Need" [by John Ciardi]

"Men Marry What They Need" [by John Ciardi] 

John Ciardi, a poet and editor whose verse translation of Dante many of us read in college, and who is sometimes patronized as "middle-brow," wrote an amazing poem, which you should read: "Men Marry What They Need":

Men marry what they need. I marry you,
morning by morning, day by day, night by night,
and every marriage makes this marriage new.

In the broken name of heaven, in the light
that shatters granite, by the spitting shore,
in air that leaps and wobbles like a kite,

I marry you from time and a great door
is shut and stays shut against wind, sea, stone,
sunburst, and heavenfall. And home once more

inside our walls of skin and struts of bone,
man-woman, woman-man, and each the other,
I marry you by all dark and all dawn

and have my laugh at death. Why should I bother
the flies about me? Let them buzz and do.
Men marry their queen, their daughter, or their mother

by hidden names, but that thin buzz whines through:
where reasons are no reason, cause is true.
Men marry what they need. I marry you.

-- John Ciardi

I wonder what a woman would say in reply. -- DL

from the archive; first posted May 16, 2012

Comments

[Maria]

Women marry once to make secure,
Then marry twice for passion that endures.
What first a fence upon a cliff
With pestered pause and reason’s rule,
Second try they fly above the rushing shore,
Its base their fertile feelings fed.
What starts as mind twins as lust.
Women marry twice their joy’s requite.