I suppose you’ve noticed, Fidelia, that drunks
rarely bang on your door anymore. You sleep
straight through, no longer aroused every few hours
by an amorous
clamor. Your telephone no longer jangles
at three A.M., breathes in your ear, and hangs up.
No more does your latest victim, or maybe
the victim before
last, wake you by asserting that you’re heartless
for sleeping while he dies, much worse by sleeping
with someone else. If it was unfair that your
lovers tormented
you for your beauty, cheer up: Worse suffering
derives from age’s ruin. It’s not your fault
that your skin puckers, sags, and gathers, but now
men turn away when
you expect homage. When you lust—lust never
relents—your wet fury finds no complaisant
organ. You whine; you drink vodka; and your old
lovers groan: revenged.
Or say: If your old lovers consider
their anguish revenged because
you suffer as they did, nonetheless
they dupe themselves, fixing doddery
eyes on women who ignore them. Revenge,
as Comrade Zero takes pains to observe,
is reflexive: Youth considers age
reproof for survival. Eld understands
that retribution will gather, crazed
as old porcelain, at the corners
of beautiful young eyes and mouths.