Hen-Pecked

The job of the rooster is to trod the hen,

not to be bloody hen-pecked.

Frequently good men are.

OK, people are not fowl.

And it is uglier in the other direction.

But is it so hard to be equal?

Can’t a man make an occasional growl

to keep the pecking thing off?

All this wants is animal balance.

And how I would like to tell them,

yet, clearly it is none of my business—

good anthropologists, mum.

But are they always? and isn’t there a point

beyond which we strive to end aberration?—

female genital mutilation, for example.

What is the level of hen-pecking, then,

beyond which we may open our mouths?

Sadly, I fear there is none.