In the UK, civil partnerships are a legal ceremony on par with civil marriages (as opposed to Church of England marriages, as I understand it). Once you’ve given notice (and attained the correct immigration papers, if you’re like me), you receive a pretty folder in mail with the all the choices for your ceremony script, including the option for 1-3 readings for your ceremony.
Alex and I love reading, especially reading to each other. I also write poetry and insist on carting my poetry collection with me wherever I’m living. So when it came time to pick what readings we wanted for our UK civil partnership ceremony, we had more than a few to choose from.
I can tell you this now: what we were drawn to first was not what we ended up choosing. In the first months of our relationship, Alex and I read Cecile by Ruthann Robson (short stories) and What is the this called love by Kim Addonizio (poetry) to each other, curled up in the nooks of each others bodies in total bliss. But, neither an excerpt from ‘Theories of Men’ by Robson (really good, btw) nor ‘Fuck ‘ or ‘Kisses’ by Addonizio was really going to work. (‘Fuck’ is my favorite poem–go read it!) Then I thought, Why not Ivan E. Coyote’s short story ‘How I Knew’ from The Slow Fix? Sigh. While Coyote’s sentiments equal our feelings, we just don’t love fishing or Air Supply as much as they do. Even the newly discovered chapter ‘Lovers’ from Susan Trott’s The Holy Man didn’t fit because I’d read it at my friend’s wedding.
So, where to go? Back to basics really, and, ironically for an English major who I admit has often degraded form poetry, we ended up picked two sonnets–by dead straight guys at that! Ok, I’m being a bit dramatic: Pablo Neruda and e.e. cummings aren’t just dead straight guys… And of course the poems have meaning for us: Alex wrote an excerpt from Neruda’s Sonnet XVII in my first Valentine’s card and e.e. cummings’ poem has been my favorite love sonnet of all time.
And just in case you don’t know either, I’m including both of your sappy, poetic enjoyment:
Sonnet XVII, by Pablo Neruda (Reading 1)
I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
—————–
(untitled) by e.e. cummings (Reading 2)
now all the fingers of this tree(darling)have
hands,and all the hands have people;and
more each particular person is(my love)
alive than every world can understand
and now you are and i am now and we’re
a mystery which will never happen again,
a miracle which has never happened before–
and shining this our now must come to then
our then shall be some darkness during which
fingers are without hands;and i have no
you:and all trees are(any more than each
leafless)its silent in forevering snow
–but never fear(my own,my beautiful
my blossoming)for also then’s until
