"Sex without Love"

[breathedout]

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, “Sex Without Love,” from Stag’s Leap

Comments

[unreconstructedfangirl]

❤️

[starshipfox]

This is a GREAT poem. I love that whole book so much. It's always so hard to quote any part of Olds in isolation because what she does as a whole is so effective, so it's good to see this here and be reminded that each poem does stand on its own merits too.

[the7endless]

From someone who didn't grow up around English language literature and is just starting to discover some things, THANK YOU for sharing this! What a fascinating poem... off to look up the author.

[breathedout]

You are in for a treat! Olds is fantastic. I recommend that whole collection.