To Landladies in General and Mine in Particular

You tribes of fury, cardinal in guile,
You horrid, wrangling hags, go threaten hell
With rent; give Lucifer your crocodile
Attentions: lease your fires to him, you fell.
Dread shrews and scolds. What vicious wombs expelled
You here? What breasts have nippled you with gall
And bane to set you stinging; who withheld
The needed growth and harshly farrowed small,
Malignant minds? Your tyrannies are skillful;
Coached in rancor, drilled in grievance, cold.
Tenacious, shrill, you machinate your willful
Harms and claw the helpless world, for gold.

Go deep to die: the grave’s a crowded place
Where worms make rooms of you and rent your face
To other worms.