Marital Bliss

Marriage
by Linda Pastan

He is always turning the radio on,
or the stereo, or the TV news,
and she is always shouting at him
through the noise to turn them off.

It's the kind of thing that should be settled
before marriage, the way prospective
college roommates must say whether they smoke.
But they've been together for years,

and he still fills his head with facts
and music (arias, average rainfalls,
the temperament of the nation) as if
he's saving them up for something.

She says it's like living with a flock
of angry crows, squawking and rattling
their wings inside the house.
She wants her head to be filled

with silence, with empty space
for tranquility to enter. There are times
when their life is a dance they perform
around each other, trying not to collide.

"Move the way a violin would sound,"
a real dancer said. He puts on her favorite
CD, the Brahms Intermezzo.
Sometimes even crows are happy.


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from Shenandoah Vol. 55 No. 2