Poem: On Auden's Fall of Rome

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

A clerk I am of no import
I spend the hours sitting here
In brown and taupe official drear
And writing rhyming lines for sport.

My desk a haven square and true
With walls around that hide my face
So nobody can see a trace
Of the naughty things I do.

Sometimes I have an itch or two
In places inappropriate
With no one to prevent respite
I scratch them and I think of you.

Caesar, love, you lie abed -
Tell me you don't think of me!
Staring up into pink canopy
Which mimics well my well-formed head

Or bottom, in its curvature.
Its color, like the forms I stamp,
Like my body, flushed and damp
With perspiration's overture.

To craft a rhyme takes only time,
And steady rhythm aids climax,
And then my muscle - contracts -
At thoughts of stacks of forms sublime.