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Note:
This poem is from an issue of “secret” poem in which all
poems that were published were submitted anonymously.
The
Secret of a Lasting Marriage
(For Mr. & Mrs. X on Their Twenty-Fifth Anniversary)
It's such
a shy, uncluttered secret, actually,
small enough to write on a
hothouse grape. It's the
dazzling goddess of Compromise,
with Rita Hayworth hair, shuffling round the house in a
ratty old bathrobe
which the brawny, yodeling god of Romance
washes without complaint. It's
learning to give and take, like a trombone.
It's simply that marriage is a
two-way street —the Champs Elysées
lined with flags and flowers,
down which you and your spouse march toward each other
at this weirdly glacial speed
while all of life's beanballs
bonk down on your heads:
custard pies and rubber checks,
golden bowls and mastectomies,
in sickness and health, Napoleon and Josephine,
Fred and Ethel, for better and for worse.
And when, after marching for twenty-five years,
you finally meet at the moonlit Rond-Point,
up pops your gorgeous retirement home
like some great soufflé of love. And you
glide through the front door
arm in arm,
draw the drapes and dim the lamps,
and at last, by the light of
your shimmering silver,
as always, you do. You do.
--Anonymous
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