On Taking a Wife
‘Come, come,’ said Tom’s father, ‘at your time of life,
There’s no longer excuse for thus playing the rake.
It’s time you should think, boy, of taking a wife.’
‘Why so it is, father. Whose wife shall I take?’
may i feel said he
(i’ll squeal said she
just once said he)
it’s fun said she
(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she
(let’s go said he
not too far said she
what’s too far said he
where you are said she)
may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she
may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you’re willing said he
(but you’re killing said she
but it’s life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she
(tiptop said he
don’t stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she
You, Me and the Orang-utan
Forgive me, it was not my plan
to fall in love like this. You are the best of men,
but he is something else. A king
among the puny; gentle, nurturing.
Walking without you through the zoo, I felt his gaze,
love at first sight, yes, but through the bars, alas.
Believe me, though, it’s not a question of his size –
what did it for me were his supple lips, those melancholy eyes,
that noble, furrowed brow. His heart, so filled with care
for every species. And his own, so threatened, rare –
how could I not respond, there are so few like him these days?
Don’t try to ape him or dissuade me, darling, please.
For now I think of little else, although
it’s hopeless and it can’t go on, I know –
I lie here, burning, on our bed, and think of Borneo.
from Don Juan, Canto I
CXXXVI
’Twas midnight – Donna Julia was in bed,
Sleeping, most probably, – when at her door
Arose a clatter might awake the dead,
If they had never been awoke before,
And that they have been so we all have read,
And are to be so, at the least, once more –
The door was fasten’d, but with voice and fist
First knocks were heard, then ‘Madam – Madam – hist!’
CXXXVII
‘For God’s sake, Madam – Madam – here’s my master,
With more than half the city at his back –
Was ever heard of such a curst disaster!
’Tis not my fault – I kept good watch – Alack!
Do, pray undo the bolt a little faster –
They’re on the stair just now, and in a crack
Will all be here; perhaps he yet may fly –
Surely the window’s not so very high!’
CXXXVIII
By this time Don Alfonso was arrived,
With torches, friends, and servants in great number;
The major part of them had long been wived,
And therefore paused not to disturb the slumber
Of any wicked woman, who contrived
By stealth her husband’s temples to encumber:
Examples of this kind are so contagious,
Were one not punish’d, all would be outrageous.
I can’t tell how, or why, or what suspicion
Could enter into Don Alfonso’s head;
But for a cavalier of his condition
It surely was exceedingly ill-bred,
Without a word of previous admonition,
To hold a levee round his lady’s bed,
And summon lackeys, arm’d with fire and sword,
To prove himself the thing he most abhorr’d.
CXL
Poor Donna Julia! starting as from sleep,
(Mind – that I do not say – she had not slept)
Began at once to scream, and yawn, and weep;
Her maid Antonia, who was an adept,
Contrived to fling the bed-clothes in a heap,
As if she had just now from out them crept:
I can’t tell why she should take all this trouble
To prove her mistress had been sleeping double.
CXLI
But Julia mistress, and Antonia maid,
Appear’d like two poor harmless women, who
Of goblins, but still more of men afraid,
Had thought one man might be deterr’d by two,
And therefore side by side were gently laid,
Until the hours of absence should run through,
And truant husband should return, and say,
‘My dear, I was the first who came away.’
CXLII
Now Julia found at length a voice, and cried,
‘In heaven’s name, Don Alfonso, what d’ye mean?
Has madness seized you? would that I had died
Ere such a monster’s victim I had been!
What may this midnight violence betide,
A sudden fit of drunkenness or spleen?
Dare you suspect me, whom the thought would kill?
Search, then, the room!’ – Alfonso said, ‘I will.’
He search’d, they search’d, and rummaged every where,
Closet and clothes’-press, chest and window-seat,
And found much linen, lace, and several pair
Of stockings, slippers, brushes, combs, complete,
With other articles of ladies fair,
To keep them beautiful, or leave them neat:
Arras they prick’d and curtains with their swords,
And wounded several shutters, and some boards.
CXLIV
Under the bed they search’d, and there they found –
No matter what – it was not that they sought;
They open’d windows, gazing if the ground
Had signs or footmarks, but the earth said nought;
And then they stared each other’s faces round:
’Tis odd, not one of all these seekers thought,
And seems to me almost a sort of blunder,
Of looking in the bed as well as under.
Jealousy
‘The myrtle bush grew shady
Down by the ford.’ –
‘Is it even so?’ said my lady.
‘Even so!’ said my lord.
‘The leaves are set too thick together
For the point of a sword.’
‘The arras in your room hangs close,
No light between!
You wedded one of those
That see unseen.’ –
‘Is it even so?’ said the King’s Majesty.
‘Even so!’ said the Queen.
Firelight
Ten years together without yet a cloud,
They seek each other’s eyes at intervals
Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls
For love’s obliteration of the crowd.
Serenely and perennially endowed
And bowered as few may be, their joy recalls
No snake, no sword; and over them there falls
The blessing of what neither says aloud.
Wiser for silence, they were not so glad
Were she to read the graven tale of lines
On the wan face of one somewhere alone;
Nor were they more content could he have had
Her thoughts a moment since of one who shines
Apart, and would be hers if he had known.
Cheat
As in the beach scene framed on this postcard,
where a jovial uncle is packed into sand
until even his head disappears below ground.
Just so, Ovid tells how unchaste Vestal Virgins
were shovelled under, quite alive but drowsy,
no longer afraid of the dark or the weight
of the dirt that will drown them.
In this dingy pub, cinders in a grate dust over.
I dab the tip of my nose for your odour,
remembering how, like a pontiff wet with balm,
when anointing, I sunk with the fluke of your hips,
our movements incessant as a distaff and spindle.
Then, with him away and your place empty,
how we changed, stepped up our game and conjured:
two mongrel dogs locked and hot with instinct,
became a horse the rider moves in time with.
Our spent bodies: eels fetched up in a bucket.
Night reclaims the light, a bell chimes,
my glass is drained; through the window pane
this interior steadies itself on the street.
I watch the stream of passers-by walk through me.
Tryst
Night slips, trailing behind it
a suddenly innocent darkness.
Am I safe, now, to slip home?
My fists tighten your collar, your fingers
lock in my hair and we hover
between discretion and advertised purpose.
Dawn traffic in both directions,
taxis, milk floats, builders’ vans.
Each proposes a service or poses a threat
like the police, slumped couples in cars
left to patrol each other, to converge
at a red light that stops little else.
Each separation is outweighed
by more faith, more sadness;
accumulated static, the shock in every step.
I go to sleep where my life is sleeping
and wake late to a fused morning,
a blistered mouth.
In Defence of Adultery
We don’t fall in love: it rises through
us the way that certain music does –
whether a symphony or ballad –
and it is sepia-coloured,
like spilt tea that inches up
the tiny tube-like gaps inside
a cube of sugar lying by a cup.
Yes, love’s like that: just when we least
needed or expected it
a part of us dips into it
by chance or mishap and it seeps
through our capillaries, it clings
inside the chambers of the heart.
We’re victims, we say: mere vessels,
drinking the vanilla scent
of this one’s skin, the lustre
of another’s eyes so skilfully
darkened with bistre. And whatever
damage might result we’re not
to blame for it: love is an autocrat
and won’t be disobeyed.
Sometimes we manage
to convince ourselves of that.