Dedicated to Johnnny Murtagh for being an amazing rider and Yeats the horse he steered to win the July Ascot Gold Cup and become only the second ever horse to win the Golden three years in succession. Both rider and horse deserve the highest of praise.

A poet is at home pretending to enjoy himself, while fantasizing about his wife’s younger friends. The wife, long a veteran of his melancholia, confronts him as he writes a final poem.