Sweetheart, this evening your smell is all around
Down by the fishing-boats, the sky trembling
above the pier. Your tears have dried on my palms.
Darling, we should never have done that.
You made me your own, painted my face
into smithereens. Who can say where my tongue
has been in your dark boudoir? Soft heelprints
on my shoulder, sound of the hummingbird breathing its last.
Regret is in the air. Dante Gabriel Rossetti
saved his poems from her worms. Long hours
turning the rain to whisky. Weeping spectacles.
The landlord sees me mine Sinatra at the bar.
Sweetheart, are you listening? Pay heed
for I am insane on the underground, burning
the crossword with my eyes. I owe money
to a bowler hat, keep a brick from London Bridge
under the bed. We are drowning twice nightly
in rivers of silk. This is the year of the tiger.
Hush. There is no end to my love for you, for I
have eaten the owl’s egg, endured the sharpening of spoons.
When you see me in my uniform, act unconcerned.
The pin and the pomegranate will suffice to show
the workings of my mind. I am up to my eyes
in onions Sweetheart. Undress and read this.
Jeanette Winterson has just placed this on her site as poem of the month. ( And after readng it, I am surprised she took so long in highlighting such a wonderfully- ‘recklessly’ desirous poem!)
It is a deliciously, self consciously naughty poem and leaves lots and little to the mind of the reader! I love the moments of opacity where the recipient beloved may decipher the code at their leisure- or is it haste! Has a reckless, ‘roving’ guerilla( sailor) aspect to sexual love and the word ‘smithereens’ is raw yet provocatively arrogant too…and then how the speaker insanely burns on the underground! What does it mean to come up for air ? !
Boudoir indeed! Tigers and silk!
I don’t think Andrew Motion ever quite found this place to rest his poetry!