From commissars of daylight
Love cannot make us free.
Nights of ungracious darkness
Hang over you and me.
We lie awake together
And hear the clocks strike three.
Our loving cannot exile
The felons but and if.
Yet, being undivided,
Some ways we can contrive
To hold off those besiegers
Who batter round our life:
The thieves of our completeness
Who steal us stone by stone,
The patronage that scowls upon
Our need to be alone,
And all the clever people
Who want us for their own.
The telephone is ringing
And planes and trains depart.
The cocktail party’s forming,
The cruise about to start.
To stay behind is fatal—
Act now, the time is short.
If we refuse the summons
And stand at last alone,
We walk, intact and certain,
As man and woman grown
In the deserted playground
When all the rest have gone.
” “the marriage portion,” by adrienne rich.
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