The Poet"

His teeth splayed in a way he'd notice and pity
in his closest enemies or friends.
Youth held his eye; he blinked at passing beauties,
birds of passage that could not close the gap.
His wife was high-blooded, he counted on her living--
she lived, past sixty, then lived on in him,
and often when he plotted lines, she breathed
her acrid sweetness past his imaginings.
She was still a magnificent handle of a woman--
did she have her lover as a novelist wished her?
No--hating someone nearer, she found her voice--
no wife so loved; though Hardy, home from cycling,
was glad to climb unnoticed to his study
by a circling outside staircase, his own design.

Auteur: Robert Lowell