When
the city of London exploded,
I cried alone for days.
Was that it?
Crying for a man overseas
who hung painting
from a  west indie tree?
Some Imperial freedom
from which we develop.
The city explodes
and buzzes
for days afterwards.
I think of every word
in the mouth
of every woman
in every building in town.
Dracula
comes to the Metropolitan centre
and we gossip
about men
who write like Bysshe Shelley
and love like Mary.
They have angels
about their homes,
I have heard soliloquised,
and knaves in the room.
I sob,
I am like them, too.
The primadonna
baby pink fin de siècle
will not free me.
Where
affection is a
concept of avant garde
and of
the outer versus inner
comes absolutely nothing
but
a dissolution
of scientific certainty.