The Cheated Daughter - sad poem

So here is a sad story, and a sad poem to go with it. The saddest poem I've written in my life, I think. And, for me, the saddest story.

The story is like this: a woman from Japan married a man from New Zealand, and they had a child, a daughter.

Then, when the daughter was very, very young, her father exited her life. She ended up living in Japan while her dad spent a year -- more than a year, actually -- in New Zealand.

Finally, she was told (and belived it to be true) that her father was coming home. Soon.

But it wasn't.

It was not true.

He, the father, he was still in New Zealand, and planning to stay there until further notice, eating cherries, drinking wine and pondering (the big question now in his immediate present) just what kind of iPod to buy.

That's the story, and here, now, is the poem about this situation. I am a man who is going to be living in New Zealand until further notice, and both the story are the poem are, to my sorrow, autobiographical.

THE CHEATED DAUGHTER

The cheated daughter
Who is not yet two years of age,
The cheated daughter,
She thinks her father,
Who is me,
Is coming home.
She has been told,
And seems, despite her youth,
To understand,
That my arrival will be very soon.
Will be, in fact, tomorrow.
But it's a lie.
Tonight I should be on the plane.
But am I?
No.
I'm taking drugs and drinking cups of wine,
With cherries red to finish off the meal,
Drinking red wine with a woman not my wife
And discussing not my daughter but the iPod
She recommends and I, persuaded,
Might soon buy.
My airline ticket I traded in for cash
So I could stay and gratify my urgencies,
Choosing to shun my home and wife and daughter
To enjoy the maximum from the women who are waiting.
My plan --
It's wrong, I feel, and yet my resolution --
Is once again to lock away my cash,
And, bare of funds, to go and take up residence
In the major house where many know me well,
The house with many rooms and many women.
My plan is books and chocolates, leisured days,
Meals brought bedside and, of course,
The women.
This house, a place not called the Rising Sun,
Stands high above the harbor on the hill.
The house has rooms and in the rooms are bells
To call the waiting women to your bed.
They come when beckoned and minister to your needs,
Smiling and gracious in the face of your demands,
Poised by experience, in attitude professional,
Unembarrassed by the necessities of your flesh.
They've seen it all and nothing can surprise them;
They've seen it all and nothing leaves them shocked.
They take a pride in serving as they do,
And, in token of that pride,
Are dressed in nurses' uniforms.
Dressed in such uniforms because
Nurses, by profession, is what they are,
Bringing me deeper needles and stronger drugs,
The poisons that I need to kill or cure.