Betrayal

By Andrea Hollander Budy b. 1947

They decide finally not to speak

of it, the one blemish in their otherwise

blameless marriage. It happened

as these things do, before the permanence

was set, before the children grew

complicated, before the quench

of loving one another became all

each of them wanted from this life.

Years later the bite

of not knowing (and not wanting

to know) still pierces the doer

as much as the one to whom it was done:

the threadbare lying, the insufferable longing,

the inimitable lack of touching, the undoing

undone.

Poem copyright ©2009 by Andrea Hollander Budy, whose most recent book of poems is Woman in the Painting, Autumn House, 2006. Poem reprinted from Shenandoah, Vol. 59, no. 1, by permission of Andrea Hollander Budy and the publisher.

Biography

Andrea Budy was born in Berlin, Germany, to American parents and raised in the United States. She earned a BS in English and education from Boston University and an MA in comparative literature and oral interpretation from the University of Colorado. Her poetry collections include the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize–winning House without a Dreamer (1993), The Other Life (2001), and Woman in the Painting (2006). Budy is also the . . .

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