The Sin Is In Living

4 Pages 1058 Words

The Sin is in Living
The title of the poem “Living in Sin,” alone makes the mind race. Naturally the thought that comes to mind is the idea of an unmarried person and premarital sex. Most often sin is related to being ungodly. However, the perception that should be gathered after reading this poem is that a title is just that, a title. The speakers wants the reader to acknowledge that life is not about sin in a sexual sense. The sin is not loving and living with someone you are not married to, but in living with someone you do not love. The speaker is a woman. She is expects much more out of life, but receives much less, leaving her truly disillusioned with the life she is currently living.
The speaker believes that she should not have to work at a situation that is meant to be. When the poem first begins the reader is immediately drawn to the fact that she the speaker is meant for a different life. “She had thought the studio would keep itself; no dust upon the furniture of love” (1-2). In believing the studio would keep itself she admits that she had the illusion that no work would be required. Her relationship should be effortless. She is now coming to the realization that she must work to keep the dust off the furniture of love. Nothing seems to be easy for her in this relationship. She is reminded of this when she looks through a dirty glass pane and listening to the drip of the faucet. “Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal, the panes relieved of grime” (3-4). The speaker wishes for the faucet not to drip, and for the windows to be clean. This is the life that God has chosen for her not the one she would have chosen for herself.
This is not the life the speaker would have chosen for herself. “A plate of pears, a piano with a Persian shawl” (4-5). The plate of pears and the Persian shawl insinuates the life the speaker feels she was destined for a life with money and prestige. “Not that...