Taste
They say that to look at a lemon
is to taste a lemon.
Even to think of a lemon
will make your mouth bloom
with the breeze and tang of the groves.
Just a sideways glimpse
and your tongue runs tart.
Someone in a back room
in Bangkok mentions one
and your cheeks meet.
Until you lap the lemon long and deep
you will not have this art.
Roddy Lumsden
Elegy: on Going to Bed
I won’t say I don’t like the kisses on the collarbone
and the Festival of the Ear,
but this love is difficult; I pray for us both:
I place a little ball of light that is my soul –
or what I’ve taken for my soul –
in the hungry centre of my body
and make it grow, beating out
like the tiny block of gold they hammered into flakes
to cover the dome of St Francis:
I use my malleable soul to line the shell of my body.
I hear her moan; I think: go boy your doing good.
And then she starts, softly, to cry.
She opens her mouth; this is terrifying:
It hurts me when you do that.
I hold her trembling under me; I didn’t know.
How can we survive if all our noises are the same?
I close my eyes when she has gone to sleep.
I look for my soul and start to stretch it out gently,
but I can’t make it work. This time, sweet Jesus Christ,
I have
no soul; this bed is soft enough to die in.
Shannon Mark Smith
Pad, pad
I always remember your beautiful flowers
And the beautiful kimono you wore
When you sat on the couch
With that tiggerish crouch
And told me you loved me no more.
What I cannot remember is how I felt when you were
unkind
All I know is, if you were unkind now I should not mind.
Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad
The years have taken from me. Softly I go now, pad, pad.
Stevie Smith
Early Evening Algebra
The madwoman went marking X’s
With a piece of school chalk
On the backs of unsuspecting
Hand-holding, homebound couples.
It was winter. It was dark already.
One could not see her face
Bundled up as she was and furtive.
She went as if wind-swept, as if crow-winged.
The chalk must have been given to her by a child.
One kept looking for him in the crowd,
Expecting him to be very pale, very serious,
With a chip of black slate in his pocket.
Charles Simic
REQUEST
Send me your bed, but please, don't change the sheets.
Pay two strong men to load it on a van,
and drive it through the rain at one a.m.
I'll be awake, I need to search for stains;
let me caress your pillows, let me find
shed hairs, and place them on my tongue.
Then I'll lie back and, parting my damp legs,
remember you and I as we made love -
one last time - one last and perfect time.
We’re better off apart - you, streets away,
mapping another’s skin. Stay where you are
while what I'll touch is soiled. If you are kind
I’ll ask for nothing more. Do this one thing.
I haven't slept for weeks. Send me your bed.
