This one captures so well the painful condition of a jealous wife.
Like a private eye she searches
For clues through diaries & papers;
Examines his clothing for the guilty stains
Of crimson lipstick, wicked wine,
Or something biological.
And when no act of sensual
Crime can be at length surmised
She is most puzzled & surprised
To be assailed by disappointment
Not relief.....
Of course in this version the husband is entirely innocent, even in his dreams, until provoked & stimulated by his wife’s unreasonable suspicions.
.............Her steel intent
Is never to betray to him
The blonde & naked thoughts within
The purple bedroom of her mind,
But her resolve can never stand
The pressure of the need to know:
‘Where?’ she says & ‘When?’ & ‘Who?’
‘What time?’ ‘What day?’ The question marks
Like powerful iron grappling hooks
Drag him to her fantasy.
And then he cannot fail to see
Within the harem of her skull
The lovely wickednesses loll.
Thus at night they softly creep,
Tap at the darkened panes of sleep;
Then white & tender, glide inside
His dream on whose delightful slope
At last her fears are justified.
The Jealous Wife: Vernon Scannell
I am still looking for a poem for a wife looking to find the strength to cope with a husband who is congenitally unfaithful (‘just a hard dog to keep on the porch’).
Who wrote the poems for Hilary Clinton or Jane Clark, to name but two of those whose husbands did not just confine themselves to dreams.
