when first you bedded me
and did the things lust does.
Though you lived fast and free
I was not one who sought
new faces or new ends,
hungry for what you taught:
the tyranny, the amends.
Of late, you're back again
(no new lads to uncover?)
demanding I maintain
some semblance of the lover;
listen, I held your heat
risking all to defend it!
Old now, I cannot cheat
the silence that must end it.
So let it end in sleep,
the spectral with the human;
what goddess cares to keep
at love's expense love's union?
You'd think I might have learned,
having done Hell and burned.
