Classic Poem

From the time you came into my house
you never seemed to mind being poor,
every evening sewing till midnight,
lunch ready a little past noon.
Ten days and nine we ate pickles;
one day—a wonder—we dined on dried meat.
East and west for eighteen years,
the two of us sharing bitter and sweet,
counting all along on a hundred years' love—
who'd have thought you'd be gone in one night!
I still remember when the end came,
how you held my hand, not able to speak—
this body, though it lives on,
at the last will join you in dust.