The Vow
The Vow
Original Text
Molly Peacock, The Second Blush (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2008): 63. PS3566 .E15 S43 2008 Robarts Library.
Molly Peacock, The Second Blush: Poems, 1st edn. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008): 19. PS3566 .E15 S43 2008X Robarts Library
Molly Peacock, The Second Blush: Poems, 1st edn. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008): 19. PS3566 .E15 S43 2008X Robarts Library
1Every time you suffer disappointment
2it makes me fall in love with you again
3because I almost cannot bear to see
4the dumbstruck purity in your face bent
5on figuring how or why you couldn't see
6it coming. Maybe I could have fixed it when
7things were in the planning stage, but now
8that it's turned out so badly, you say, what
10of your chemistry rebalancing.
11 Valiance
12is an animal virtue I learn again as you vow
13without words but with a shading of your eye
14softening into an injured decision not
15to inhale again the fumes of society.
16Your eye is like the eye of a dog
17I met as a child. I felt it was about
18to speak to me the wisdom I would need
19for my whole life, if only it would talk.
20Yet understanding nothing would be spoken
21made me vow to pledge my life to it.
Notes
9] valence: "The power or capacity of certain elements to combine with or displace a greater or less number of hydrogen (or other) atoms; atomicity" (OED, "valency," 2; "valence," 2, 3); also, courage. Back to Line
11] valiance: the quality of being brave. Back to Line
Publication Notes
Cincinatti Review 5.1
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2010
Rhyme
Special Copyright
Copyright 2008 Molly Peacock: <i>Second Blush</i> W. W. Norton; and McClelland and Stewart. Permission to reproduce must be obtained from the publisher.