I am sexual
We don’t speak of our own sexuality in public
We decent bourgeois
My grandchildren my adult children
Will be mortified by these pages
But
The lack of general currency
Enjoyed by these clumsy jottings
Reassures me that my family members
Member har
Will gracefully elide these remarks
And my beloved of lo this half-century
Knows that our intimate relations
Have been a continual source of joy to me
Thereby giving the lie to my complaints
Of unhappiness depression self-condemnation &c
And I have reason to believe
That she my beloved has enjoyed
Them our intimate relations
For which I credit in part our fidelity
Who prefer to borrow from the library than to purchase books
Who prefer to cook at home than to eat in restaurants
Who invented non-competitive badminton-without-a-net
Healthy activity for young and old
A good life needless of wealth or coercion
And our easy understanding
Natural consensus
From our earliest days
Which commenced far too early for safety and for the world
We enjoyed a general agreement on topics great and small
And even amid the insults of old age
To the brain and to the body
Even amid the vicissitudes of parenthood
The body of the beloved
The firmsoft flesh
The luxurious curves
The smooth skin
The sparkling eyes that bespeak the effervescent mind
The scent the taste
The full lips the downy nape
I believed that everyone thought as I did
Because my beloved thought as I did
I thought everybody believed intelligence equals beauty
That the intelligent are inevitably beautiful
No big deal
And hence I appreciated
Neither her intelligence nor her beauty
As I should have done
The rarity of them
The grace
A woman’s cunning at such an early age
Of course I want children
Did she give me the thought
Of course we want to grow old together
Was that my idea
And I flew to New York
Where she went to school
And on the plane I asked myself
Like the crass adolescent I was
In my early twenties
What’s in it for me
She loves you you idiot
Do you think she’s faking it
When we
When she
And we have indeed grown old together
And we have indeed raised kids
With all the dread and rage and joy
That such exhausting tasks entail
She greeted me in her kimono
On 23rd street
Her face ablaze with joy
You idiot she loves you
And I have reason to believe
That she enjoys my idiot love