De volta

The Smell

I hate the smell of myself as I grow old.
No longer a comfort in secret,
It drags with it all the scurf, all the old stuff,
Hanging about in the ruins of myself.

Nothing can stop it for long, as I brush my teeth,
My hair, and shave, and dab a pathetic spot
Of aftershave afterwards on the bits under my chin.
It comes back again with a plum persistence.

But today it came back with a different turn.
Breathing its evil odour, its reek of decay,
As I sat here in my ruins, and smell myself,
And settled into it, as into a mattress

Sinking down with a sigh at the end of a long day,
Bits of me splayed this way and that, held tight
By the rigid arrangements all round, till sleep
Began to come over me, breathed deeply and slowly

Into lungs that were waiting to take me
Down to the depths, the deepest bed of the sea,
Drowned, till the smell melted away
And the tide turned slowly over the empty shore.

Anthony Thwaite