When a Woman Loves a Man

Poems

David Lehman

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780743255943
• eBook ISBN: 9781416584872
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

This collection of poems from the series editor of The Best American Poetry and the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry seamlessly captures the romance, irony, and pathos of love. David Lehman movingly chronicles the days in post-9/11 New York and bring a fresh perspective to an array of subjects -- from the Brooklyn Bridge to Gertrude Stein to Buddhism. The work of a poet at the height of his lyrical and reflective powers, When a Woman Loves a Man is playful, inventive, and as amusing as it is clever.

Part One

When a Woman Loves a Man

When she says margarita she means daiquiri.

When she says quixotic she means mercurial.

And when she says, “I’ll never speak to you again,”
she means, “Put your arms around me from behind
as I stand disconsolate at the window.”

He’s supposed to know that.

When a man loves a woman he is in New York and she is in Virginia
or he is in Boston, writing, and she is in New York, reading,
or she is wearing a sweater and sunglasses in Balboa Park and he
is raking the leaves in Ithaca
or he is driving to East Hampton and she is standing disconsolate
at the window overlooking the bay
where a regatta of many-colored sails is going on
while he is stuck in traffic on the Long Island Expressway.

When a woman loves a man it is one ten in the morning
she is asleep he is watching the ball scores and eating pretzels
drinking lemonade
and two hours later he wakes up and staggers into bed
where she remains asleep and very warm.

When she says tomorrow she means in three or four weeks.

When she says, “We’re talking about me now,”
he stops talking. Her best friend comes over and says,
“Did somebody die?”

When a woman loves a man, they have gone
to swim naked in the stream
on a glorious July day
with the sound of the waterfall like a chuckle
of water rushing over smooth rocks,
and there is nothing alien in the universe.

Ripe apples fall about them.

What else can they do but eat?

When he says, “Ours is a transitional era,”
“that’s very original of you,” she replies,
dry as the martini he is sipping.

They fight all the time
It’s fun
What do I owe you?
Let’s start with an apology
OK, I’m sorry, you dickhead.
A sign is held up saying “Laughter.”
It’s a silent picture.
“I’ve been fucked without a kiss,” she says,
“and you can quote me on that,”
which sounds great in an English accent.

One year they broke up seven times and threatened to do it
another nine times.

When a woman loves a man, she wants him to meet her at the
airport in a foreign country with a jeep.

When a man loves a woman he’s there. He doesn’t complain that
she’s two hours late
and there’s nothing in the refrigerator.

When a woman loves a man, she wants to stay awake.

She’s like a child crying
at nightfall because she didn’t want the day to end.

When a man loves a woman, he watches her sleep, thinking:
as midnight to the moon, is sleep to the beloved.
A thousand fireflies wink at him.
The frogs sound like the string section
of the orchestra warming up.
The stars dangle down like earrings the shape of grapes.

The Gift

“He gave her class. She gave him sex.”

—Katharine Hepburn on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

He gave her money. She gave him head.

He gave her tips on “aggressive growth” mutual funds. She gave him a red
rose and a little statue of Eros.

He gave her Genesis 2 (21-23). She gave him Genesis 1 (26-28).

He gave her a square peg. She gave him a round hole.

He gave her Long Beach on a late Sunday in September. She gave him zinnias
and cosmos in the plenitude of July.

He gave her a camisole and a brooch. She gave him a cover and a break.

He gave her Venice, Florida. She gave him Rome, New York.

He gave her a false sense of security. She gave him a true sense of uncertainty.

He gave her the finger. She gave him what for.

He gave her a black eye. She gave him a divorce.

He gave her a steak for her black eye. She gave him his money back.

He gave her what she had never had before. She gave him what he had had
and lost.

He gave her nastiness in children. She gave him prudery in adults.

He gave her Panic Hill. She gave him Mirror Lake.

He gave her an anthology of drum solos. She gave him the rattle of leaves
in the wind.

Who He Was

He walked fast. Anyone watching
would think he knew where he was going.

He lived alone.

The small shocks of everyday life
bummed him out. His phone
went dead for the second time in a week
on account of the phone company
changing technologies
from copper to fiber optic.

He was a regular boy. One year
he wanted a chemistry set for
his birthday. The next year
a camera. Then a stereo so he could
listen to Bob Dylan sing, “I ain’t
gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.”

He wrote a short story about
a man living on the Upper West Side
whose next-door neighbor,
a beautiful art historian at Barnard,
is murdered for unknown reasons.

Luckily, when his next-door neighbors were found
with their throats slashed,
he was a junior at Columbia driving
from Cleveland to Columbus
(he saw how big America was).

The key to happiness lay in being
the only citizen who didn’t watch
the O.J. trial or Princess Di’s death
or even the Gulf War on TV.
He was too busy reading John Cheever’s Journals.

The interviewer asked if he could give an example
of a preposterous lie that tells the truth about life
and Cheever said “the vows of holy matrimony”
without hesitation and at night while the neighbors slept
he became the housebreaker of Shady Hill
who had read his Kierkegaard, and knew,

“When two people fall in love and begin to feel
that they’re made for one another, then it’s time
for them to break off, for by going on they have
everything to lose and nothing to gain.”

She met him at a party. He was holding two drinks.

She laughed, and he gave her one of them.

She met him at the door. “You don’t look
like a rapist,” she smiled.

She wondered why he was late,
why was he always late? He doesn’t phone. Why
doesn’t he phone? What’s he doing
with the light on in the attic at three in the morning?

There were things that scared him: blood tests, catheters.

He was a Gemini with Leo rising
and with Mercury and Venus in Cancer.

She saw him when he wasn’t there.

She came over to listen to Chet Baker sing
I’m Old Fashioned. She listened
and said, oh that, that’s heroin music.

In business school he wrote a paper
on one of the most lucrative sentences
of the late twentieth century:
“Would you like fries with that?”

He had the voice of a man whose greatest accomplishment
was that he made it onto Nixon’s enemies list.

“I used to think there was a right way
and a wrong way to do everything.

Now I know there’s only ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Colophon
• Also by David Lehman
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue: Brooklyn Bridge
• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• End Note
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• A Note on the Type