Larkin and Wife

A soft-boiled egg, rye toast with jamand soy links: the day's first compromise.Philip steeps his tea, while my French presstakes the plunge. He blinks owlishlyagainst the morning sun, pats my ass,and we bear our cups to separate offices.

They say writers shouldn't wed—at least,not with other writers. And yet, they do,and no one is surprised when soon the rumorsof drink and lovers fly, something breaks,and indignant manuscripts go off to press.My history, and Philip's chronic dread.

We like to think we've learned from our own fears,and so we chart our course of days in loveand watchfulness, giving quarter hereor there, drawing gracious boundaries,taking care to build what battlementswe need as hollow, false-fronted things.

Philip's porn, for instance. The magazinesstay nestled in his well-loved drawer, and Ipretend the unfamiliar muse is justmy great galumphing creature's fancy. A bitof bondage, a spot of spanking—it's only play,no real pain. The safeword is "Ted Hughes."

And in return, he suffers my movies, my cats,my vegetarian diet. They give him matterfor complaint, and that makes him happy.

Music is hard; I tolerate his jazz,have learned to like Bechet; he enduresmy Dylan; at Wilco, kills his hearing aid.

It's hard. Of course it's hard. Isn't hethe poet of deprivation, death and gloom,more than half in love with misery?Aren't I my own unique disaster?But doesn't being with him create for methe contrasting, alien role of optimist?

Taps of slippered feet on floorboards, sighsof books easing from shelves—these float to mefrom down the hall, and I have learned to hearin them not the tumblers of a lockbut domesticity's quiet hum,like surf upon a rocky western shore.

A woman, like a man, is guardianof her own happiness. Yet when at nighthis weight like ballast shifts our mattress down,even though he frets or snores—yet thereis my companion on the long, black ship.There is love, my fellow passenger.