Last night I came to bed and found, to my great pain,
another with you in our sheets. I am to blame;
night after night I’ve sat up reading while you’ve lain
and lonely shivered. Want of comfort overcame
at last your long, too much assumed, fidelity.
I’ve had my head in Homer. You, Penelope,
having rebuffed all rival suits, have had resort
to this… this… I must call it… thing. And I had thought
that I was all you needed as a source of heat.
I was your male equivalent of Abishag.
Age is upon us when, to warm you, I compete
with water boiled and bulging in a rubber bag.
Listen to this poem — read by the author