Gaudete by Ted Hughes

a
                                                                             mesh
    Have suddenly dragged taut, with the bulk of a body.
    A few sprinkled words
    Have transformed a bitter-cored ulcer
    Into something delicious.
    With one glance at the blue van, he walks into the house,
                                                    calling his wife’s name.
    He climbs the fondly designed cedar staircase to his
                                                                              studio
    Without stealth. He returns casually
    As if with some curio to show to a guest
    Loading his target pistol, with which he is expert,
    And without pausing strides into the lounge.
    His red-haired wife
    Is lying naked on the couch, almost hidden
    By the naked body of Lumb
    Who, half-twisting, and supported on one elbow, watches
                                                                         Dunworth
    As if waiting for him.
    Dunworth has paused.
    His brisk executive plan evaporates confusedly.
    The sight in front of him
    Is so extraordinary and shocking
    So much more merciless and explicit than even his most
                                                                   daring fantasy
    That for a moment
    He forgets himself, and simply stares.
    He gropes for his lost initiative,
    But what he sees, like a surprising blow in a dark room,
    Has scattered him.
    He raises his pistol meanwhile.
    He is breathing hard, to keep abreast of the situation.
    He is trying to feel
    Whether he is bluffing or is about to become
    The puppet
    Of some monstrous, real, irreversible act.
    He waits for what he will do,
    As a relaxed rider, crossing precipitous gulleys
    Lets his horse find its way.
    He levels the pistol at his wife’s face and holds it there,
                                                                       undecided.
    Her red hair is strewn bright and waterish
    Across the arm of the couch which pillows her head.
    Her large eyes, mascara-smudged in her gleaming face,
                                                                        watch him
    Moistly and brilliantly.
    Her bold, crudely-cut mouth, relaxed in its strength,
    Yields him nothing.
    He searches her hot fixed look for some sign of reprieve,
    Moving his aim from her brow, to her mouth, to her
                                                                            throat.
    She swallows but resettles her head as if to watch him
                                                             more comfortably.
    Her nakedness has outstripped his reaction, incredible,
    Like the sudden appearance of an arrow, sticking deep in
                                                                          his body,
    Seconds before the pain.
    It cannot unhappen, and now the pain must come.
    The white swell of her stomach, welded so closely
    To that other strange body, which at first he hardly
                                                                            notices
    But which prints in his brain as something loathsome and deadly, a huge python’s coils, of some alien nature and substance.
    He feels a pressure inside his skull, like a long lever
                                                           tightening a winch.
    He sees the