This poem’s cousin, Couples, was posted two days earlier. Here, as usual, the English is followed by une version en français y una versión en español. There is also a Notes section in English. The third of these notes is, in fact, a disquisition on romantic or connubial relationships.

There were things about her he did not like

There were things about her he did not like, and

This was one of the things he liked.

There were ways in which they did not fit together, and

These made him feel at home.

Of course at times they got along marvelously well, wishing

To do and say things the same.

And she was pleased to be all the particular ways she was.

Once upon a time, this, for him, was all.

Notes

[1] I once heard the American singer-songwriter James Taylor say wonderfully, in a television interview, that his love songs were not about relationships he had had, but about ones he was hoping to have.

[2] As I was working on the French version of the present poem, I came across this sentence from Georges Bataille’s novella Le bleu du ciel (written in 1935, but first published in 1957) : « Ce que j’aimais en elle était sa haine, j’aimais sa laideur imprévue, la laideur affreuse que la haine donnait à ses traits. » (What I loved in her was her hatred, I loved her unexpected ugliness, the hideous ugliness that hatred gave to her features. Lo que me encantaba de ella era su odio, me encantaba su inesperada fealdad, la espantosa fealdad que el odio daba a sus rasgos.)

[3] When my first wife and I were splitting up, my psychotherapist proposed that rather than quickly jumping into another highly committed relationship, I should try to go out with a range of different women, try to get a better idea of what kind of woman I might live happily with. (Not that my first wife and I did not have our “bons moments”!)

In Houdini’s Box: The Art of Escape, the British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips reports one of his patients saying: “My mother used to say that I had X-ray eyes, that I knew what I wanted before I opened the menu.” Not to be vulgar, but my psychotherapist’s idea, which was Phillips’s too, is that it’s worth taking some time—and having the courage to take some time—to learn more both about the “items” on the menu and about one’s own desires, and about desire more generally.

My therapist made his comment back in the day when young women’s “clocks” started ticking around about age 30, and it was thought, too, that in Manhattan at least, there were not many available and fatherhood-worthy straight men. So, we might say, I was able to follow his advice and thus perhaps able to learn, if only decades later, that it was not as sensible as it had once seemed. A fact—or larger discussion—on which the present poem, in its modest way, touches.

My therapist had in mind something like a “good fit,” but the lover of this poem appreciates the ways in which he and his beloved do not fit (see, again, Couples). This brings me to a podcast that a French friend urged me to listen to at the end of last year. In it Charles Pépin, a sort of self-help philosopher, urges single people not to look for their perfect match, nor to content themselves with single life, but to go in search of someone quite different from them and to embrace the otherness of this other person. Or I will call these the “othernesses.”

Français

Il y a des choses en elle qu’il n’aimait pas

Il y avait des choses en elle qu’il n’aimait pas et

C’était l’une des choses qu’il aimait.

Il y avait des façons dont ils n’allaient pas ensemble et

Avec ces façons ils sentaient chez lui.

Bien sûr, souvent ils s’entendaient à merveille,

Souhaitant faire et dire les choses pareillement.

Et elle était contente avec toutes les manières particulières qu’elle avait.

Español

Había cosas de ella que no me gustaban

Había cosas de ella que no le gustaban, y

era una de las cosas que le gustaban.

Había maneras en que no encajaban, y

esas lo hacía sentir como si hubiera vuelto a la familia.

Por supuesto, a menudo se llevaban maravillosamente bien, deseando

hacer y decir las cosas de la misma manera.

Y se alegró a ella tener todas las particularidades que tenía.

Esto para él, antaño, fue todo.

— Poem(s) and artwork by William Eaton.