The Knowing Afterwards, when we have slept, paradise- comaed and woken, we lie a long time looking at each other.I do not know what he sees, but I see eyes of surpassing tenderness and calm, a calm like the dignity of matter. I love the open ocean blue-grey-green of his iris, I love the curve of it against the white, that curve the sight of what has caused me to come, when hes quite still, deep inside me. I have never seen a curve like that, except the earth from outer space. I dont know where he got his kindness without self-regard, almost without self, and yet he chose one woman, instead of the others.By knowing him, I get to know the purity of the animal which mates for life. Sometimes he is slightly smiling, but mostly he just gazes at me gazing, his entire face lit. I love to see it change if I crythere is no worry, no pity, no graver radiance. If we are on our backs, side by side, with our faces turned fully to face each other, I can hear a tear from my lower eye hit the sheet, as if it is an early day on earth, and then the upper eyes tears braid and sluice down through the lower eyebrow like the invention of farmimg, irrigation, a non-nomadic people.I am so lucky that I can know him. This is the only way to know him. I am the only one who knows him.When I wake again, he is still looking at me, as if he is eternal. For an hour we wake and doze, and slowly I know that though we are sated, though we are hardly touching, this is the coming the other coming brought us to the edge ofwe are entering, deeper and deeper, gaze by gaze, this place beyond the other places, beyond the body itself, we are making love.
About This Quote
About Sharon Olds
Sharon Olds was American poet. Sharon Olds is an American poet. She won the first San Francisco State University Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Love — Quotes exploring romantic love, compassion, and human connection