Wedlock

by Dorothy Livesay

Dorothy Livesay

Flesh binds us, makes us one
And yet in each alone
I hear the battle of the bone:
A thousand ancestors have won.

And we, so joined in flesh
Are prisoned yet
As soul alone must thresh
In body’s net;

And our two souls so left
Achieve no unity:
We are each one bereft and weeping inwardly.

From: 
Collected Poems: the Two Seasons