NEVER:

Never did she diet, had never tried to slim,

She had never even wanted to enter a gym,

Doing tough exercise, never belonged to her ilk,

Her generation ate greens & drank up their milk.

 

Ladies like her were told to behave & never to smoke,

To never tempt men, nor ever, their passions to evoke,

To stay virginal until the day that she eventually wed,

To be a good wife, obey her husband at home & in bed.

 

She was told that the sun was bad & coarsened the skin,

She sported milk-marble breasts & thighs of porcelain,

Musk-rose, talcum patted, upon her pallid round cheek,

And in hat & lace gloves, she´d go to church once a week.

 

She had never gone to work, outside the walls of her home,

She vowed never to leave her children alone on their own,

Her home well kept, laundry fresh & hot meals on the table,

No more than “Housewife,” upon her lifetime´s short label.