Shakespeare thinks about his wife and his plays (poem)

from the poem “Shakespeare”:

And then there she was, or always had been:
Anne Hathaway some name in my ears,
Anne Hathaway from a friend’s family,
older than me and the eldest daughter,
brown hair and a farmer’s body brewing ale
and getting at the butter and the bread,
always busy, and then busy with me.
If she couldn’t read or write, she could talk,
her words the most natural performance,
and she could listen and watch, witnessing
my earliest speeches and poetry.
I was never so comfortable again,
and so unafraid, than when I discovered
ways to love her, to please another mind,
to uncover another’s heart and flesh,
two young bodies already old with talk.
But my love was less than my wit, my inventiveness.
There’s nothing to match that energy,
my mind and then my body full of words
like a child’s top spun just to watch it spin,
like water that cannot keep from boiling.
I saw that Anne and my words weren’t two songs
that I could learn to share myself among,
but that only one could truly own me,
woo me, seduce me, win me – and that Anne
wasn’t that one, that nobody could be,
that, compared to my plays, no human being
could renew themselves so constantly,
and that if Anne had a similar impulse
I too would wilt in her eyes and become
some plaything. And while I’ve paused to ask why –
why the filling of some overflowing world,
why my mind and heart should be so profuse,
and lavish such care on mere scenery,
but pause and become staid in the presence
of someone more alive and various
than any name called out upon the stage –
my only answer is always longing.
Only longing burns my flesh properly,
and sometimes I can only keep from despising
all that my body has needed and done
by putting that disgust into a speech.
Sometimes the waste of infatuation
is only justified by the scenery,
a page the better replacement for the bed,
or indeed the act outdone by an act
on the stage, and with all the world looking.
What a relief, thousands instead of two.

Buy Time and the River here or Read more about the book or listen to the entire poem here: