Unwritten Law by Louise Glück

Unwritten Law
Louise Glück

Interesting how we fall in love:
In my case, absolutely. Absolutely, and, alas, often—
so it was in my youth.
And always with rather boyish men—
unformed, sullen, or shyly kicking the dead leaves:
in the manner of Balanchine.
Nor did I see them as versions of the same thing.
I, with my inflexible Platonism,
my fierce seeing of only one thing at a time:
I ruled against the indefinite article.
And yet, the mistakes of my youth
made me hopeless, because they repeated themselves,
as is commonly true.
But in you I felt something beyond the archetype—
a true expansiveness, a buoyance and love of the earth
utterly alien to my nature. To my credit,
I blessed my good fortune in you.
Blessed it absolutely, in the manner of those years.
And you in your wisdom and cruelty
gradually taught me the meaninglessness of that term.

MARGINALIA

I suppose I am disgusted by this how this is turning out I’ve brought out all the sad poems because I can’t cry and now this place is riddled with unshed tears and I am turning into a revolting heap of patheticness and I can’t write for shit and oh god—