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Louise Gluck (22 April 1943 / New York / United States)
Poems by Louise Gluck : 16 / 45
Love Poem
There is always something to be made of pain.
Your mother knits.
She turns out scarves in every shade of red.
They were for Christmas, and they kept you warm
while she married over and over, taking you
along. How could it work,
when all those years she stored her widowed heart
as though the dead come back.
No wonder you are the way you are,
afraid of blood, your women
like one brick wall after another.
Louise Gluck
Submitted: Thursday, January 01, 2004
Read poems about / on: christmas, women, work, mother, red, pain, heart, poem, woman
Poems by Louise Gluck : 16 / 45
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This is a very interesting poem. It concisely expresses how the life and attitudes of one person, in this case a mother, can effect the life of her child, a son.
She was unable to share her heart with him. She sequestered it. She gave him scarves, but not her heart.
She 'turned out scarves in every shade of red', her relationships were many and painful, blood red, the blood of life. Her son, unable or afraid to live with that pain, would have cold, 'bloodless' relationships, the opposite of his mother. At least that is how I interpret this fascinating, fascinating great poem.