The haunting heavily figurative tone poem, "The Ache of Marriage."

[. . . .]

A clumsy, desperate poem--intentionally, for that is the aching quality of a marriage, a search for communion--transposed into the movements of love rather than its words. This poem is not Levertov's first expression of marriage, but it is one of the first to relate her feelings as woman to the relationship—as ark, as recipient as well as participant. "Song for Ishtar" and "Hypocrite Women" also reveal this newly expressed ethic of the complete woman.