Poems should always be read at least twice, because the first time you go through a poem it is like unwrapping a gift (even if it’s one you didn’t care for). The second time you know where the poem is going, so you get to enjoy the scenery on the way. It’s possible to notice so much more detail once the idea behind the poem has been digested, and reading it several times is like getting to know your way around a new town or small country.

Until the last few lines, my first reading of this poem led me through the process of what I imagined was the prospect of a real divorce. My subsequent reading then gave me the opportunity to enjoy the poem without anxiety over the possible outcome.

Divorce is usually messy because, even if the parties separate on an amicable basis, they can turn into raging pitbulls with a few button-pushing turns of phrase in letters from their respective solicitors. As a result I initially thought the first verses of the poem rather bracing, because if you have ever been through a divorce, it’s hell. This is when sardonic humour as a byproduct of unhappy experience can be useful to retain one’s sense of perspective in life, while coping with the end of our marital hopes and expectations.

We are guided through the poem by the proposition that the poet would have welcomed an end to her marriage. Her blackly comedic attitude to the potential for “recriminations, therapy and casual sex” includes hanging out with other single women, because a common bond finds friends. There is an inferred “but” in all this, because the poem begins “I had been . . .” which indicates from the outset that whatever was expected was not what actually happened. So we already know that the poet is setting us up for an ending that differs from the one she describes as being something she was “looking forward to”, and thus she elicits our curiosity. Did the divorce not go ahead? Or did it go ahead but, instead of relishing being suddenly single and emotionally battered, did our poet find the divorce a source of far more difficulty and anguish than she had anticipated?

It is only in the last verse that we discover the divorce is in a dream, put into perspective on waking to emphasise the poet’s awareness of her good fortune. This is actually a poem about two people who are “fond baggy shameless bores/ blessed with unmitigated happiness”. The description imbues the union with tangible and enduring love and affection, not a bright flash of passion that cannot be sustained.

When Bingham gives us the image of her face and her husband’s both being reflected in the wardrobe mirror, we know that they are in bed together. When she wakes “from dreaming of divorce” to find her limbs tangled with those of her husband, a sense of relief prevails, not only for the poet, but also for the reader.

We all love a happy ending but, for an ending to be happy, the unhappy journey beforehand must be evident, even if it is only in the mind.

Divorce

by Kate Bingham (Quicksand Beach, Seren)

I had been looking forward to divorce –
recriminations, therapy and casual sex,
the disentangling of my life from yours

by sympathetic girl solicitors
who blush referring to you as my ex
and practice to avoid their own divorce.

I would have let you keep the chest of drawers
and hung my pants and socks on picture hooks
like bunting. What was mine would not be yours,

I’d cut my hair (too short) make common cause
with spinsters in wine-bars, bandy regrets
or shrug them off: you marry, death or divorce

come next, or so I thought. But love endures –
the mirror in the wardrobe door reflects your face
in mine and mine in yours,

a couple of fond baggy shameless bores
blessed with unmitigated happiness.
At night I wake from dreaming of divorce,
my arms and legs in sweat, tangled with yours.

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