The Monogamous

"I bid your rain be bountiful, O time That brought my Andalusian romance:" ....And so the Arab wrung that rainy rhyme Against the fact of ending continents Where from the dock he saw Her ship released To lanes of water bound forever East. That is the fate of the monogamous Known even to that couple whose high tryst Was barely half an hour on the bus, And who, dropped off unsated and unkissed, Forego in one another half a life. For them, the vows of husband, church and wife Have sacked a thousand Troys. Another dies Before his watching wife who, fraught with grief Of years together (yet with some relief) Must cure herself of him before she lies Under a younger lover to undo The Gordian depression of "I do." My dear, we are denied those lauded tears And unconditioned vows, and cannot know The mutual vistas of imagined years When life has spoken an eventual No. Still there is scope in such as us, complex Enough to love good company and sex, And who, although reviled as unrefined, Can keep a single night forever new: String passion to a power and a mind That are no less tremendous for being true As one concerto in a book of ten Meant to be loved and learned and played again.