(in memoriam George Barker, 1913-1991)
Foul of mood and luscious as an angry boil,
nostrils flared by the scent of innocence unspoiled.
For sheer nastiness sans pareil and untouched,
stoking runaway engines with a leper’s crutch,
Oh Brother Ponce, since last on you I laid eyes,
and prosperous-looking via seedy mores and lies,
tell me does the lamp in Hessian Square still draw
its share of the uncloseted, whose lilting call
hisses hither in a drunken list, its cast of pearling
vessels charnel green, pacing hurried dusk past hurling?
Treacherous and lecherous as a Lutheran slumming,
with rum and spunk enough to drown the Second Coming.
How might I, light-addled and distracted, penetrate
the mannered will of High-Rent Holly, articulate and ejaculate
as she dolls to starboard, spreads and drops,
making light stretch over her topsy-turvy stocking tops?
Dauphinette, in cushion-thumping tantrum, take
delivery of thy long-fermented punishment, slake
all comers, the easy sleepers and the restless birds,
roughly nubbing insomnia from their shawl of words.
Millais’ little blind girl (o epiphanic rain-
bow), sweet breath to warm away the pain
of some postillion’s intimately frozen balls,
blue-ribboned while circling endless royal malls.
Scandal breathes and belches roe and garlic,
no spice untried, every cure laid upon the sick.
All this was reminiscence in a Locke-like moment,
burdened and unpurged of the poisoned endowment,
as from his sleeve he drew the lady’s memorial moss,
and I was coffin-quiet in my loss.