Let's Hear It For The Wives

of the many great male authors,
of the last 200 years, without whom
reading would not be the pleasure it is,
for readers all around the world.

Many male authors chose wives
as companions who were wise
in words and rich in ideas, women
who the law said were the property
of their husbands,
as chattels they were denied the vote.
And yet, uncredited,
and from the domestic sphere
they enriched the world of ideas.

Through their sense of economy
and practicality, they took literature
from being the muddled male domain
it had been since modern publishing began,
and had been for a l-o-n-g time,
to express ideas with which
everyone could identify.

And where their husbands were often poor 
because they were proudly pound foolish,
who lived in pound-foolish worlds,
the women kept their households afloat
with how penny wise they were.