Sex Without Love
Sharon Olds (1942- )
How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other's bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health--just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.
Hmm... Running as a metaphor for sex without love. Perhaps then sex without love is actually another way of loving one's self.
ReplyDeleteI think me and you should try it and see what we discover.
Zing!
I don't run, I skip. Zoom! :)
ReplyDeleteI posted this poem for my cousin, Mr. L, who has come full circle and, ironically, has taken up running.
It's dear to me, this poem. I wrote a paper on it... tough to get through at the time.
I meant try the sex, not the running!
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I don't do either very well...without the love.
ReplyDeleteI like the poem and often think about that, sex without love, or the inverse love without sex. Do the two have independence from each other? Or is sex just a biological need and love an emotional need which should be on two planes of two diffent universes? And lately for some reason I only come up with more questions, but I will say this emotional needs are vital to our biological existance, thus concluding that love and other emotions do guide our well being.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite poems - good score, English Major :)
ReplyDelete