Friday, October 15, 2004
'Corner Table'
You tell me you are going to marry him.
You knew almost at once he was the one.
Your hands rested on the quilted tablecloth.
"Such clever hands," I used to say.
I gave them names I never spoke aloud.
You tell me how you met and where you'll live.
It's easier to watch your lips than listen.
Your eyes flash in the candlelight like knives.
The waiters drift by with their phantom meals.
Tonight the dead are dining with the dead.
You twist the wineglass slowly in your hand,
And I speak of other things. What matters most
Most often can't be said. Better to trust
The forms that hold our grief. We understand
This last mute touch that lingers is farewell.
--Dana Gioia
i have to admit that this is not my favorite poem of mr. gioia's, but it's starting to grow on me. on first reading, i didn't care much for the end-stopping of every line in the first two stanzas, making the sense-units exactly parallel to the line units. but on second reading, i notice that this practice enhances the contrast with the final stanza, as the sense-units break across lines, perhaps marking the difficulty of communicating the unsayable. perhaps, too, it complicates one's trust in 'the forms that hold our grief'--the form is straightforward and easy to trust, as it were, for the first two-thirds of the poem, but this is not equally true in the final stanza.
