Onionskin Man

A flash of scent: in the street and a blurred face

I took at first for a face that never blurred

As I pause for a car to pass recall to mind

The twitch of a lust in nineteen forty-three.

Yes! in that summer's looseness of a waist

I sensed the obeisance of a world of corn.

What else do I remember? A muted voice,

Assured entry into a slick small mouth-

A memory of lust which can stir me a moment,

Is not that a scrap of living lust itself?

True I have known the oblique provocative before:

As once a shock of blackened ruins incited

My rankling thought to action and desire.

But now I sting with an experienced fire:

And I'm rich, then, as Troy's great mound, where cities

Lay caked in tiers. Mine all alive!

No hearth's extinguished: glitters in the blood

Are a grumble of embers underneath a crust.

The car flows on. The mudguards' crusted dirt

Has gloved the saurians of the Kentish weald.

Warm in more skins than any bulb presumes,

In Welbeck Street I stroll in Eden field.