Support System

(Or: Whatever Shall I Put in My Preface?)
I should like to thank . . . now pause a sec . . .
There's no one to thank, since I live alone,
Write alone, echo my own intrinsic thoughts,
Have no experts to turn to--nor editor, mind you!
My Rolodex is empty; not a single scholar
Or social whiz is at my beck
And reckoning; I am sans Lady Colfax,
Without a Sitwell friend, devoid of T. S. Eliots,
Clean out of Sackville-Wests and in need of
An E. M. Forster. Do I even have
A nameless correspondent who might
"Generously and gratuitously" correct "the punctuation,
The botany, the entomology, the geography, and the chronology"
Of my works? Nay, I do not!
And they wonder why I get cranky.