On Not Having Much Luck With Women

Decades ago I visited Winchester Cathedral and have always remembered viewing the tomb of Bishop Fox with its gruesome sculpted corpse in a state of advanced decay. Bishop Fox was Secretary of State to Henry VII and Henry VIII and founder of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, so was a major figure. His tomb was part of a ‘fashion’ at the time to be truthful as to what awaits us all, great and small alike.
 

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I remember a girl, fifty years ago now,

   I had hopes she’d be my first “squeeze,”

On mooching too close she whipped off her shoe
   And threatened to crack my knees!
I was terribly miffed, we had quite a row.
   I ask you what can you do?

Later, I married, I can’t say it was fun,

   It flickered eleven long years;
Straight-lipped and focused, jolly as ’flu,
   Her smile froze the air round my ears;
At last like fever she upped and was gone.
   I ask you what can you do?

And then a lover; such all-night days!

   The bedroom department went wild;
But, ah, intrigued by a books-and-booze crew,
   Rapt as a big-eyed child,
She drifted off in Jack Kerouac ways.
   I ask you what can you do?                                                

And as for the daughter, I was taken aback

   When with jogging, smoothies and weights
She developed firm muscles and a fresh morning hue
   But also fresh loves and hates;
Like a sweat-wringing jockstrap, I was flung on the rack.
   I ask you what can you do?

Untroubled by women, in Winchester fane

   Bishop Fox’s cadaver decays,
Sculpted in stone for the startled to view,
   Memento mori it says:
All loves, all hopes, perish in pain.
   I ask you what can you do?

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© November 2014