You Must Meet My Wife

She lightens my sadness
She livens my days
She bursts with a kind of madness
My well-ordered ways
My happiest mistake, the ache of my life
You must meet my wife.

She bubbles with pleasure
She glows with surprise
Disrupts my accustomed leisure
And ruffles my ties
I don't know even now quite how it began
You must meet my wife, my Anne
One thousand whims to which I give in
Since her smallest tear turns me ashen.

I never dreamed that I could live in
So completely demented, contented a fashion
So sunlike, so winning
So unlike a wife
I do think that I'm beginning
To show signs of life
Don't ask me how at my age one still can grow
If you met my wife, you'd know
Dear Fredrik, I'm just longing to meet her. Sometime.

She sparkles
How pleasant
She twinkles
How nice
Her youth is a sort of present
Whatever the price
The incandescent what? the
Light?
of my life, yes You must meet my wife
Yes, I must. I really must. Now.

She flutters
How charming
She twitters
My word!
She floats
Isn't that alarming? What is she, a bird?
She makes me feel I'm--what?
A very old man
Yes--no!
No?
But
I must meet your Gertrude
My Anne
Sorry--Anne.

She loves my voice, my walk, my mustache
The cigar, in fact, that I'm smoking
She'll watch me puff until it's just ash
Then she'll save the cigar butt.

Bizarre, but
You're joking.

She dotes on
Your dimple
My snoring
How dear
The point is, she's really simple
Yes, that much seems clear
She gives me funny names
Like?
"Old Dry-as-Dust"
Wouldn't she just?

You must meet my wife
Yes, I must, yes, I must.

A sea of whims that I submerge in
Yet so loveable in repentance
Unfortunately still a virgin
But you can't force a flower.

Don't finish that sentence!
She's monstrous!

She's frightened
Unfeeling!
Unversed
She'd strike you as unenlightened
No, I'd strike her first
Her reticence, her apprehension
Her crust!
No!
Yes!
No!

Fredrik!
You must meet my wife
Let me get my hat and my knife!
What was that?
I must meet your wife.

Yes, you must. Yes, I must.