The Mother/Child Papers: With a new preface by the author

One Marries

‹61› One Marries For my son: To fear himself, and love all human kind —Shelley One marries, why to live with terror, as a man might approach tigers, he approaches the mountain bride, a cave, all overgrown, bushy— and honeyed, dank, and if all he can manage is to plant a flag there, a tower, or whatever it is, a cannon, a muscle—he has failed, but how to endure that gigantic lightning, although he seeks it purely. Others seek empire, discovery in pursuit of conquest, to control, to rule the savages, the savage, the inviting lush wilderness, “plants of a sumptuousness and variety they have never imagined,” and their glossy and matted fruits. Those others want to guarantee dominion, perfect perfect as death, and he does not. But marriage? marriage? impossible balance the moon, virgin, he wants the moon ‹62› and it is not within him, or is within him as a mask, a bright shadow, a drawing forth in waves that break, curiously, back and forth He must accomplish research, consider what is natural. Consider the chimpanzee, the pygmy, the whale. But he remembers Ants have discipline, and hordes, and war for slaughter or slavery, he does not know what other heroism may be possible He is afraid he sees no marriage, nor brotherhood, except for larger conquests against time, and never at rest in the child’s song he remembers, when he married syllables to melody at the close of the evening surrounded by toys, before he learned, even, the language . . . and his parents sat, under their lamps, listening to him, peacefulness raining down on them useless as air . . . that is what he wants ‹63› They will move to the city fearful and yet the symphony is natural the sculpture natural, the slaughterhouse, the city itself shapeliest, sloven in strength and lights beside a proud river, no commerce on that artery, no rivet, no concrete, no stretched glass but the mind’s extended play made truth as if the bride let drift the veil away and the wind took it, toward autumn, and she let fall her gown, white, stiff or clinging, the fabric, many-folded drapery, and she deftly let subside her underclothes and stood. ...