readings
Julie Mann (Sara's sister) read an excerpt from Letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, and a poem of her own.
From Letters :
The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of their solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust.
A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one or both of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.
Jules' poem:
"Knowing"
(for Ted and Sara on their wedding)
And even now the voice of sound
between the two edges of your stream
The possibility of us, closing in,
river stones, kneeling into the water
to be together, knowing how soon
your foliated lives will dream
of each other
Julie
Jean Nordhaus (Ted's mother) read a poem of her own:
Anniversary
I remember the heat, the green-striped tent,
the little canapes of crab and ham,
my frazzled mother, guests in summer hats,
bowls of roses wilting on the tables,
and how the water fell upon the ground
as rain and rose again. There was a body there
impersonating me. It wore my face,
my ice-blue linen dress (I had refused
the white) and stood, benumbed, on ice-blue
linen spikes while kisses floated by
like ducks along a moving track.
I felt that I was living
someone else's life, surprising
as the wedding presents heaped upstairs,
those pristine bowls and implements whose uses
I could barely guess. And you, so cheerful,
there beside me, wanting this.
We hardly knew each other then, although
our bodies recognized each other well enough
and half-suspected they could live together.
Were the day and the hour propitious?
Many who now are gone were still alive.
Others had not yet arrived. The auguries
said neither yes nor no, but there was water
in the air and on the ground and I
have held you in my arms as air
holds water to relinquish it again.
Jean
