Poetry - Safe S*x

If you are among those who think poetry belongs in times past, well here is something more like Keats for 2010. One of the powers of poetry is, to me, its ability to communicate, or suggest, a wealth of meaning with a few words, as I think this poem does. And if you find poetry somewhat impenetrable, I believe he is suggesting that the thing described by the title of this poem but rarely, if ever, exists - outside the boundaries God has put around it, for good reason - and that the misuse of the thing is the source of many catastrophes besides. (Donald Hall was married to Jane Kenyon, whose poems I posted last week.)

Safe S*x

by Donald Hall

If he and she do not know each other, and feel confident

they will not meet again; if he avoids affectionate words;

if she has grown insensible skin under skin; if they desire

only the tribute of another’s cry; if they employ each other

as revenge on old lovers or families of entitlement and steel—

then there will be no betrayals, no letters returned unread,

no frenzy, no hurled words of permanent humiliation,

no trembling days, no vomit at midnight, no repeated

apparition of a body floating face-down at the pond’s edge

Image from here: http://www.machinecancel.org/forum/hoboken_more/returned_mail.jpg