Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
Living in Sin: Living with a sexual partner without being married. When Rich wrote this poem (about 1960), it was a daring thing to do. | studio: studio apartment, originally called so because artists (especially painters and sculptors) would rent large spaces with minimal facilities in order to have room to create. | taps: faucets.
Living in Sin
1 She had thought the studio would keep itself; 2 no dust upon the furniture of love. 3 Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal, 4 the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears, 5 a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat 6 stalking the picturesque amusing mousehad risen: —I think this means "had risen into her imagination."
7 had risen at his urging. 8 Not that at five each separate stair would writhe 9 under the milkman's tramp; that morning light 10 so coldly would delineate the scrapssepulchral: pertaining to a burial or place of burial.
11 of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles; 12 that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers 13 a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own — 14 envoy from some village in the moldings . . . 15 Meanwhile, he, with a yawn, 16 sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard, 17 declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror, 18 rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes; 19 while she, jeered by the minor demons, 20 pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found 21 a towel to dust the table-top, 22 and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove. 23 By evening she was back in love again, 24 though not so wholly but throughout the night 25 she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming 26 like a relentless milkman up the stairs.