|
IT
SMELLS OF MORTALITY
Not
civet’s ooze nor Magie by Lancôme
hangs
particles of much-desired scent
in
my olfactory entrances.
Should
they invade, my nostrils’ flair rebel!
Snort
them away, usher them out, them all:
the
farding stills of Grasse may tickle some
but leave me cold as stone.
I
find synthetics thin, and if I must
absorb
the oils of more exquisite vats,
quaffing
lewd stinks cured into fragrancy,
I’ll
only take them, atomised and rare,
so
long as some of the lewd tang is there,
redolent
of bitch urine or field crust
or may-bush petalled with flies.
But
better than such bottled sex-spore is
the
trace my love leaves where she’s laid her down.
The
way I make my sense dilate
is
drubbing it with odours of the pore,
the
body’s slag and unhygienic ore
exuded
from dark pits. All these I kiss
and she is not offended.
The
ripe warehouse knows my dependency
and
I have lurked about the mature farms.
But
most of all, my dear, I say
the
freighted odours with which I collide
in
cobbled markets or the rank seaside
reduce
me less than your crammed pungency,
your punnets of aroma.
If
love is a singing fish in a wicker creel
much
used and salt, and curious to the nose,
it’s
not its death but dying smells.
I,
mandarin, perceive its air not thin
but
dyed with our mortality, dear kin;
and
I gloat that I have some sense to feel
how
much life’s in decay.
Alan
Marshfield
top
of page
note |
