Eros by Louise Glück
Eros
Louise GlückI had drawn my chair to the hotel window, to watch the rain.
I was in a kind of dream, or trance —
in love, and yet
I wanted nothing.It seemed unnecessary to touch you, to see you again.
I wanted only this:
the room, the chair, the sound of the rain falling,
hour after hour, in the warmth of the spring night.I needed nothing more; I was utterly sated.
My heart had become very small; it took very little to fill it.
I watched the rain falling in heavy sheets over the darkened city —You were not concerned. I did the things
one does in daylight, I acquitted myself,
but I moved like a sleepwalker.It was enough and it no longer involved you.
A few days in a strange city.
A conversation, the touch of a hand.
And afterward, I took off my wedding ring.That was what I wanted: to be naked.
MARGINALIA
Because it told exactly how I felt.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in The Seven Ages by Louise Glück, published by Ecco, 2002. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
The masterful collection from the acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Wild Iris and Vita Nova
Louise Glück has long practiced poetry as a species of clairvoyance. She began as Cassandra, at a distance, in league with the immortal; to read her books sequentially is to chart the oracle’s metamorphosis into unwilling vessel, reckless, mortal and crude. The Seven Ages is Glück’s ninth book, her strangest and most bold. In it she stares down her own death, and, in doing do, forces endless superimpositions of the possible on the impossible—an act that simultaneously defies and embraces the inevitable, and is, finally, mimetic. over and over, at each wild leap or transformation, flames shoot up the reader’s spine.” (Source)
ABOUT LOUISE GLüCK
Louise Glück was born in New York, New York, on April 22, 1943, and grew up on Long Island. She is the author of numerous books of poetry, including Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014), which won the 2014 National Book Award in Poetry; Averno (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2006), a finalist for the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry; and Vita Nova (Ecco Press, 1999), winner of Boston Book Review’s Bingham Poetry Prize and The New Yorker’s Book Award… (more)
Read more poems by Louise Glück • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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Francisca
Hermoso
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Jane
Hi sorry to bother. I like this poetry too. It really really really touches me! Thanks for the beautiful type you have made in this blog. But I guess in this sentence “the room, the hair, the sound of the rain falling”, “the hair” ought to be “the chair”, to indicate the things mentioned in the first sentence. I didn’t read the original form, and I am not sure whether I am right. It feels great to find someone like it too. I believe this poetry must bring unforgettable feelings for you as well.
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