Living Room by Elaine Feinstein
(Talking to the Dead, Carcanet)

How can we make friends before one of us dies
if you quarrel with two fingers in your ears,
like a child? Things won’t come out right now.
You think I don’t love you. I won’t argue.
Your angry sadness stings me to tears.
I think of your old coat, smelling of chemicals,
leant against long ago in the Everyman queue,

when you offered me those tender early
films that made our lips tremble, or else
the forgiven boy in the forest of Ravel’s opera,
more touching to me than your verbal
skills or passion for the genius of gesture
in crayon, mime, commedia dell’arte.
It’s love we miss, and cannot bear to lose.

I know you would much prefer I choose
intelligence to prize, but that has
always had its downside, your words
so often cut me down to size, I wonder
if some accident removed me first, whether
my writing days would count as evidence
that in my loss was little real to miss.

The likeliest end is that the bay tree left
to my attention, withers on the window sill,
and moths lay eggs in the lentils, while
still hurt by memories of you as gentle, I’ll
look into a monitor for comfort, and cry
aloud at night in the hope somewhere
your lonely spirit might hang on and care.

Marriages are not made in Heaven (unless we are delusional); they are the result of two people’s efforts to live together despite our natural human tendencies to war, while simultaneously requiring love and affirmation from our partners. I chose this poem from a collection that is mostly about the memories of a marriage – and a husband’s death – because it is so painfully honest about those two sides of a relationship. We are not always lovely to one another; sometimes the hothouse of a partnership fosters frustration and magnifies our tiniest faults. The title isn’t referring to the name of a room in the poet’s house; it refers to the space in which we coexist inside our relationship.

I am assuming that the initial image of the poet pleading with her husband because he has two fingers in his ears – while still arguing with her – is not metaphorical. While it devalues us if the person we love/ share our bed/ life/ children with will not listen to our reasonable efforts to “make friends before one of us dies”, here, the husband is locked in a war against death, which he will ultimately lose; his level of frustration must surely be exacerbated by his fear of this, and all he must go through in his efforts to live.

When one person thinks that her partner doesn’t love her (as appears to be the case in the poem) it could either be a device to perpetuate wilful self-pity, or a cry for reassurance. If there is rejection of that reassurance then it becomes also a rejection of the one who is accused of not loving, and causes unnecessary pain. The husband’s current behaviour, however, is mollified by the poet’s memory of his old coat, against which she leant (with affection, no doubt) in the cinema queue before years of attrition muddied the waters of youthful optimism.

Taking her to watch “those tender early films” touched the poet more deeply than her husband’s “verbal skills”. Intelligence “had its downside” because her husband’s words “so often cut (her) down to size”. The presence of intelligence cannot replace the requirement for tenderness in a relationship.

Perhaps in the belief that she lacks intelligence of the kind that her husband would applaud, the poet wonders whether, if she were to die first, her writing days would be evidence that she “was little real to miss”. She needs reassurance too. It would be the mundane (but necessary) touches in their lives, she thinks, that would be all that was left to show that she was gone: the bay tree would die without water and moths would lay eggs in the lentils.

There is a monitor (of vital signs) in which the poet wishes to find comfort, so at this point her husband is in hospital. At night she wishes his spirit could hear her weeping and stay, and show that he really cares. The marriage has, perhaps, been difficult sometimes, but we love our partners for their tenderness towards us, and, as long as we remember those times – as the poet does – we have something that we do not wish to lose. When we go, it is our love and kindness towards others for which we are remembered and missed.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy