Monday, November 11, 2013

A poem a day...

Keeps the doctor away. That's how that saying goes, right? Or maybe that's apples...

This is one of my favorite poems. I'm not particularly well-read, at least not enough to have accumulated a "favorite poems" list of any great length - I found this one one day in college as I was skipping ahead through my American literature anthology when I was supposed to be reading what was actually assigned. But I've loved this ever since. It's about marriage and I think it is perfect. Enjoy!

Most Like an Arch This Marriage

BY JOHN CIARDI
Most like an arch—an entrance which upholds   
and shores the stone-crush up the air like lace.   
Mass made idea, and idea held in place.   
A lock in time. Inside half-heaven unfolds.

Most like an arch—two weaknesses that lean   
into a strength. Two fallings become firm.   
Two joined abeyances become a term   
naming the fact that teaches fact to mean.

Not quite that? Not much less. World as it is,   
what’s strong and separate falters. All I do   
at piling stone on stone apart from you   
is roofless around nothing. Till we kiss

I am no more than upright and unset.   
It is by falling in and in we make
the all-bearing point, for one another’s sake,   
in faultless failing, raised by our own weight.
John Ciardi, “Most Like an Arch This Marriage” from I Marry You (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1958). Used with the permission of the Ciardi Family Publishing Trust.

Source: The Collected Poems of John Ciardi (University of Arkansas Press, 1997)

(found on the interwebs here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/176395)

2 comments:

M said...

I love this poem! I have been thinking about arches today, since I taught about Roman architecture this morning. Thanks for sharing!

Jaime said...

What a funny coincidence! Happy I could share. :)