Mrs Worthy, Student Landlady

She sits like a sausage in front of her telly,
wasting one gnarled paw on her barren belly,
and craning the other thin claw from drag to drag,
between her vain-red lips of a stuck-at-home hag
and the fusty air of a draughtless dwindling life.

When the telly’s done and ruthless night is come,
she painfully inserts her frigid frame so glum
between the sheets where Earnest turned his shoulder
like the last time he died and made the bed grow colder -
there she aches away the lonely hours like no-one’s wife.

She lies with staring sigh for nighties never lifted:
soulless years when Earnest’s pleasure never shifted
across the unstained gap of their bitter union
to fill the hollow where once she craved communion

with him to gain peace in her mind in place of strife.

.

Author's Note

Poem triggered by "In Place of Strife'"- Government White Paper 1969