(For Fanny Howe)
The costume of the people is so wretched, that, to a one who has not practiced such visitations, it is almost inconceivable. Shoes or stockings are seldom to be seen on children and often not on grown persons, so yet they stand shod only in the plush of their red bogs, making unsteady verticals.
The rags in which both men and women are clothed are so worn and complicated, that it is hardly possible to imagine to what article of dress they have originally belonged. Duds, threads, fatigues and once-fancy hand-me-downs step out in parallel, all swaddled in knots, bedizened in glad rags; wardrobes run down past the least coherence.
It has been observed that these sheer beasts never dismantle themselves of their clothes when they go to bed; but the fact is, that not only are they in general destitute of blankets, but, if they once took off their clothes, it would be difficult to put them on again. Is not this a terrible way to be naked: wanting spread or comforter, however mute; to lie in envy of the gravel under grass?
Thus, their habit is worn day and night till it literally falls to pieces; and even when first put on, it is usually cast-off fragments; for there is not one subject out of ten who ever gets a coat bespoke, but chaff away instead their little means at hazard, where at last, exposed by numbers and for lack of other stuff, they pawn the nails of their fingers and toes, with shirred and smooth and shaggy, even to their kelder and dimissaries. That's the way they walk in view: tender and fractious, unsheltered and exposed, while yet not wholly detached, as the moth waits famished and the needle rusts.
God!
Just think
of all those pianos
standing
with their white
tusks
splayed
in anticipation of toccatas.
So toe
that foxtrot,
glide
your finery,
and be glad to be in the first
frush
and you'll get by.
Chaffer away
as the spitfire
blooms
run
above you.
Untache yourself, would you,
and get up
on that stone
like a bloody peacock!
Get yourself into
the swim.
Sure, any animal
is “disfigured”
when disrobed of its
hide,
“and cold too”,
as the motley
sow
remarked to her farrow.
Unbrace yourself there
in front of
the warmth.
Let that uniform
out a loop
and join us in the next
tranche
laundered.
The bunny hugs
its burrow
as the addict
does his coupon.
You can never have too much
exposure.
But I cannot lie!
Bleach
leached once
even into my livery,
quite stemmed
that old cashflow.
I’d a damned sight sooner
break
into a pavan
than go higgling
with those demons.
Let the cast of them
go splat
and which of you would raise
a finger
to get out?
Climb past these
unmentionables let you.
The human
is a thing
who
walks
around
disintegrating.