Love Calling Earth

Sex Without Love

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.

_____Sharon Olds

[found in the plagiarist poetry archive]

I'm not sure what to think of this, and what she is trying to say. I guess I'll ponder this for a while.
First I thought she was pitying "the ones who make love without love". Then she says they "are the true religious, the purists, the pros" ... is she admiring them, wishing she was one of them? Or is she being sarcastic? And I read the comments on the plagiarist site, and I am amazed at the very different conclusions people come up with - and how convinced they seem they got it right.
Me, I am forever in doubt. But I would much rather keep asking questions than come up with an answer and be done.

Comments

[Silvia Bichler]

Well, I guess she sees sex as one of many substantial human needs like hunger and thirst - not to mix up with love which is a more complex need like peace of mind.

Example: Your favorite dinner (feeling) is lasagne (love) and when you are hungry (horny), you dream about it. However, you are so busy with your daily life and it takes too much time to study the lasagne recipe and to find out about every single ingredient. Your hungry body needs something fast and what is faster than fast food (sex) - you eat the burger and the hunger is gone. You might dream the next night from the lasagne (love) you never had but tomorrow you buy a burger again to stop being hungry. One day you will start making lasagne (love) which takes time. Your hunger will increase with every ingredient you put into and when the dish (relationship) is ready to go, you have to be careful not to burn your lips but to cool it off a bit in order not to get horrible stomach ache later. Once you have to puke it out because of your pains, you migh hate the taste of it for the rest of your life.

[Elkit]

Interesting ... where did you get the part about the stomach ache? She doesn't say anything about the pains associated with love.
And the last sentence is "the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time."

She says the single body alone is the truth. I kept coming back to that today, whenever my thoughts strayed from work.

The truth, which is the single body alone in the universe.

And it wasn't even a melancholy thought. Au contraire, comforting somehow. Like something submerged and oft forgotten, something you encounter unexpectedly like an old friend.

I'm not making sense at all, am I?

[Silvia Bichler]

well the stomach aches are referring to love and she doesn''t talk about love at all. She talks about sex. The love part was my addition to show the difference between sex and love. Sometimes they go together well, of course, like minced meat and lasagne :-)

[Elkit]

> she doesn''t talk about love at all

She does, sort of. Or about the absence thereof. It's in the title of the poem, and in this brilliant sentence that just wants to make me close my eyes and moan:
"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?"