Poetry Friday - Of all the things to need

This week’s Sophie Hannah poem I find interesting, and rather heart-warming (even while perhaps it gives a little pang to those of us who didn’t choose our situation). It would seem to be a nice sort of poem in comment on the feminist position, or at least in answer to those who would disparage marriage.

Bridesmaid

A smile or kiss is all you have to spare;

Never a bed, a key, an inch of floor.

All that I am, all that I have, I share,

Yet I possess not half as much but more -

Double, I swear,

Though you remain unsure -

Twice what I owned or hoped to own before.

There is no metal weighing down your hand.

You are not subject to the whims of kings

And claim that you will never understand

The pleasure or the point of two gold rings.

For you no grand

Passion waits in the wings

Just your own space. A woman needs such things.

Not me, I say. Of all the things to need,

I choose another mind, another face,

Someone of whom, if I were ever freed

I would be tattered remnants or a trace.

What awkward breed

Would crave, would even chase

What age and death will bring in any case?

Sophie Hannah, First of the Last Chances