If Your Marriage Aches, Apply Honey and Poetry

I had the honor of reviewing and advanced copy of Twenty Poems to Bless Your Marriage: And One to Save It by Roger Housden. Here’s a sneak preview of the most poignant versus that vibrated with me especially after watching Hope Springs this week.

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke spells out in a letter excerpted in the book that it is good to love because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being, that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is preparation.

 “Those who want to have deep love in their lives must collect and save for it, and gather honey.”  Rilke

When all else fails, read him poetry for foreplay.

In her biting poem, The Ache of Marriage, Denise Levertov describes marriage as an ark. Levertov says it is an ark that may only carry some of us only partway across life’s ocean. It is an ark in which the very ache of being human can be revealed and also redeemed through conscious undertaking shared with another.

The Ache of Marriage

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,

are heavy with it,

it throbs in the teeth

 

We look for communion

and are turned away, beloved,

each and each

 

It is leviathan and we

in its belly

looking for joy, some joy

not to be known outside it

 

two by two in the ark of

the ache of it.

© 1966 by Denise Levertov

 

So for all my Monas out there who wonder if their marriage will carry them all the way across the ocean or what would happen if they were forced to change ships, know you are experiencing both the love and the ache that only we us humans can enjoy and endure. And if by chance you find yourself unable to endure the loneliness or ache of a relationship that has been absent far too long. Stick around, my blog is just getting warmed up and I’ll be posting excerpts from my good friend, Dr. Linda Moore’s book, Taking Back Your Power in the months to come.

The curator and author of this book, Roger Housden, has written five other books in his poem series, including Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again and Again, Ten Poems to Set You Free, Ten Poems to Open Your Heart, and Ten Poems to Change Your Life.

You can get your copy of Twenty Poems to Bless Your Marriage: And One to Save it this Christmas for $19.95 through Shambhala Publications.

Tags: divorce, marriage, separation

Category: Men & Dating