Bill And Gwen

In Swiftian mood, insisting that
The human race would never learn,
Was hopeless, doomed, Bill Harwood, pure
Logician and philosopher,
As well as spouse of poet Gwen,

Proposed a universal ban
On sex to end our sorry ways
And brought our threesome's talk on how
The world was going to a halt
Of the socially awkward kind.

Then magically, as tension grew,
As though specifically she knew
This impasse would arise, she whipped
A book up from her lap and showed,
Spread open at the very page,

A photo of a rationalist
And his divinely inspired wife,
Of Abelard and Heloise,
Their mediaeval counterparts
As sculpted on a column in

The Conciergerie, Paris,
His castrated parts cupped by her
Protectively as in a nest,
Their stooped backs turned forever on
Each other in a bed of stone.

Graeme Hetherington