Marriage and Midsummer’s Night
By Linda Gregg
It has been a long time now
since I stood in our dark room looking
across the court at my husband in her apartment.
Watched them make love.
She was perhaps more beautiful
from where I stood than to him.
I can say it now: she was like a vase
lit the way milky glass is lighted.
He looked more beautiful there
than I remember him the times
he entered my bed with the light behind.
It has been ten years since I sat
at the open window, my legs over the edge
and the knife close like a discarded idea.
Looked up at the Danish night,
that pale, pale sky where the birds that fly
at dawn flew on those days all night long,
black with the light behind. They were caught
by their instincts, unable to end their flight.
Notes:
This poem is part of the folio “Linda Gregg: Never Give Up Longing,” curated by David Semanki, and was published in Gregg’s 2008 new and selected volume, All of It Singing. It is reprinted here with permission of Graywolf Press. Read the rest of the folio in the April 2026 issue of Poetry.
Source: Poetry (April 2026)