It is time to learn the ______ of being in silence with someone, comfortably.

William Carlos Williams:

Danse Russe

If when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,--

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

When I read that poem, the “lonely, lonely” is never soft, but triumphal.

Elizabeth Kouhi (by popular request):

An Elegy

I
There’s a hollowness
a hollowness as a presence
a thing beside me.

II
We weren’t glued together,
not even at breakfast.
You enjoyed sleeping in,
I delighted in lone early mornings.

III
We weren’t glued together.
Our heads travelled different trails,
you with numbers, that I avoided
at every turn, you ran with historians
not with poets. And even in crass
dailyness you preferred mashed potatoes
and gravy to mine, baked with a dab of butter.

IV
But now during my early mornings
you are not asleep in the next room.