“Late one night she told me.
   We'd come home from a party
where she drank more wine
   than usual, from nervousness

“I suppose. I was astonished,
   which is typical,
and her lover of course
   was my friend. My naivete

“served their purposes: what
   you don't know beats your head in.
After weeping for an hour or so
   I tried screaming.

“Then I quieted down;
   then I broke her grandmother's
teapot against the pantry brickwork,
   which helped a bit.
   
“She kept apologizing
   as she walked back and forth,
chainsmoking. I hated her,
   and thought how beautiful

“she looked as she paced,
   which started me weeping again.
Old puzzlements began to solve
   themselves: the errand

“that took all afternoon;
   the much-explained excursion
to stay with a college roommate
   at a hunting lodge

“without a telephone;
   and of course the wrong numbers.
then my masochistic mind
   printed Kodacolors

“of my friend and my wife
   arranged in bed together.
When I looked out the window,
   I saw the sky going

“pale with dawn; soon the children
   would wake: thinking of them
started me weeping again.
   I felt exhausted, and

“I wanted to sleep neither
   with her nor without her,
which made me remember:
   when i was a child we knew

“a neighbor named Mr. Jaspers-
   an ordinary
gray and agreeable
   middle-aged businessman who

“joked with the neighborhood
   children when he met us on
the street, giving us pennies,
   except for once a year

“when he got insanely drunk
   and the police took him.
One time he beat his year-old
   daughter with a broomstick,

“breaking a rib bone, and as
   she screamed she kept crawling
back to her father: where else
   should she look for comfort?”