She is large and matronly
     And rather dirty,
     A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had
          driven her to it.

     Though what she does, except lay four eggs at
          random in the garden once a year
     And put up with her husband,
     I don't know.

     She likes to eat.

     She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny
          legs,
     When food is going.
     Oh yes, she can make haste when she likes.

     She snaps the soft bread from my hand in great
          mouthfuls,
     Opening her rather pretty wedge of an iron,
          pristine face
     Into an enormously wide-beaked mouth
     Like sudden curved scissors,
     And gulping at more than she can swallow, and
          working her thick, soft tongue,
     And having the bread hanging over her chin.

     O Mistress, Mistress,
     Reptile mistress,
     Your eye is very dark, very bright,
     And it never softens
     Although you watch.

     She knows,
     She knows well enough to come for food,
     Yet she sees me not;
     Her bright eye sees, but not me, not anything,
     Sightful, sightless, seeing and visionless,
     Reptile mistress.

     Taking bread in her curved, gaping, toothless
          mouth,
     She has no qualm when she catches my finger in
          her steel overlapping gums,
     But she hangs on, and my shout and my shrinking
          are nothing to her,
     She does not even know she is nipping me with
          her curved beak.
     Snake-like she draws at my finger, while I drag
          it in horror away.

     Mistress, reptile mistress,
     You are almost too large, I am almost frightened.
     He is much smaller,
     Dapper beside her,
     And ridiculously small.

     Her laconic eye has an earthy, materialistic look,
     His, poor darling, is almost fiery.

     His wimple, his blunt-prowed face,
     His low forehead, his skinny neck, his long,
          scaled, striving legs,
     So striving, striving,
     Are all more delicate than she,
     And he has a cruel scar on his shell.

     Poor darling, biting at her feet,
     Running beside her like a dog, biting her earthy,
          splay feet,
     Nipping her ankles,
     Which she drags apathetic away, though without
          retreating into her shell.

     Agelessly silent,
     And with a grim, reptile determination,
     Cold,  voiceless  age-after-age  behind him,
          serpents' long obstinacy
     Of horizontal persistence.

     Little old