The idea here was to write about marriage in terms of the actual punishing metallurgical processes by which gold wedding rings are made, from the formation of the minerals in which it is found to the finished pieces of separated jewellery with which the marriage begins. It became quite an effective allegory for the resistance and conflicts invited when two souls embark on the perilous adventure of wedding into one and was a deliberate challenge to the convention that the wedding is the 'happy ending' of something as in romance novels, as any 'married' person knows it's just the start and you aren't really 'married' in that sense for a long long time, if ever. The ego resists it as fiercely as the love invites it. Thus the choice of poetic form, terza rima, is that chosen by Dante for Paradiso but also for Inferno and Purgatorio. This 'wedding' of the he and she is hell and purgatory with a vision of heaven. I read it at our best man's wedding as part of the service though for obvious reasons in that context I emphasised the heavenly vision just before the end.
He.
It's very dark in here. I'm paralysed,
Dorman and dreamless. Feel poles
Of heat and cold unchanged. And neutralise
Them. Don't know what to do with myself, doled
With endless wastes of time to kill. Waiting
For someone to turn me up, an end to hold
Onto. Feel a distant purity but ring
False, hopelessly flawed and dull, when struck. Dumb.
This happen to me. Especially nothing.
I sent a short time somewhere crowded, numb.
About eight million years. There was lots
Of immigrant stuff I'd vaguely become
A art of. It was probably chaos.
I just lay back, let it all not happen.
Then there was a change. The night was a-buzz,
Vibrating. And I - it was quite sudden
I suppose - was in two places at once.
It got - warmer. My molecules loosened,
Got a little excited.... Ages thence,
It registered that the immigrant stuff,
With impossible speed, had vanished, whence
I was more my own thing. Though a good half
(In two different places) was missing,
Cut. But that's neither here nor there. I have
No lost identity. I feel nothing.
She.
Can't move. Can't. Move. Can only steal my grain
Against him, against more change. Petrified.
And what should I? Nothing ever mends. I'm
Stuck with myself, though God alone knows why.
I never asked to be here.Molten Light's
Delirium conceived me just to lie
Beneath the piled millenniums of Night
In everlasting restlessness. I'd been
Going nowhere. Slowly. Coldly. My bright
Beginning finished soon as it began.
Now I'm in my own way. Too dense to shift
From it. In a life without end... I'm dammed.
The only chance I've got - of real Life -
Is being overcome by Force. Another's.
But afterwards I'd only lie there. Stiff,
As if unmoved. Regardless.Why bother?
He
I want her but won't give a mile, an inch.
She's only a bit of stuff. But, oh, she's
Heaven. If only she'd yield, I'd be so rich!
She
I've done with cast-offs, drossy heels and quartz.
I was bathed in cyanide to free me,
Though a false gleam conceals it, of course.
I hate and despise like poison sweet
These clods, detest their coarsened common feel.
I'm REFINED, (if you even know what it means).
No. Not just 'polished' my so-called 'dear'. REAL.
He
You needed nerves of steel just to survive
Where I cane from. You were given a scrape
nd crushed from the start. Bent/ All you insides
Exposed. Filed. Drilled into shape.
You needed a tempered will like iron,
Smoothness and flash a hammer couldn't break.
The fault's my background. Not whom it picked on.
She
You want me? Why? Does a certain stable
Fluency attract you to me, blending
My lightness and grace? I'm pliable
If you really try. But I risk nothing,
It's just how I am, it doesn't move me.
To you it;s magnetic. All this straining
To reach me's YOUR problem. YOUR star. Icy.
He
I feel half dead. My other half's somewhere
Else. One day I'll be got back in once piece,
Perhaps. Meanwhile, I've been jolted half-aware
In opposite directions. Once...Or twice...
She
Or not... No amount of chemistry,
No amount of earth, no amount of time
Can touch me. Put your life's current through me
I'll stay switched off. Like lead, for all my shine.
He
I can't wake up. Such fatigue. It's so hard
To push through this irresistible dark, Fate's
Immoveable object - myself.... I'm shattered.
Ony once, I was dreaming of a shape
Brilliantly mettled, Primely Moving. It all
Came together, in every place...
She
Oh yes, I've dreamt of a true Golden Age
Where I, the immutable Iron Maid,
Break out at last of that golden cage,
Dim memory melting riveted gaze,
Endure, am accepted in, a world I embrace.
Touch. Know - another being. Feel...
Escape...
But - No. Im too rusted in place
In my restlessness. I will play it straight.
Keep a grip. Lie low. Remain poker-faced.
Preserve my goodness, value, glow. And wait.
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