On The Scent Of … Copyright © Cameron Hawke Smith 2012

I can love both fair and brown
Topshelf, bottomshelf, fresh or blown,
Those who soothe the sleepless monk
Or plump the pillow of a sailor’s bunk,

Or bear the trace of perfumed fingers,
Where the venereal eyeball lingers,
Those whose essence lies undiscovered,
A long time waiting to be deflowered,

Those who are gilded, those with scutcheons
Those bedewed with the slop of kitchens,
Those deeply loved, those still untrimmed,
Those broken-backed, those lightly skimmed,

All exuding pheremonal scent
Of fishgum and leather and antique print –
The élan vital of secondhand lovers
Whose nose is ever between book covers,

Nostrils twitching at the pleasure of finding
A faded petal pressed in the binding,
A copy of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
Containing a bus ticket for Worcester,

A pencilled word that inter alia
Conceals romance in marginalia,
A page defaced with cheap mascara
In the Guide to Birds of Allt na’Hara.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

P.S
Now I can carry all the world’s authors
In a back pocket of my trousers,
Zoom in and out, put William Thackeray
Into Blue Highway or Earwig Factory.

But how shall I shake hands with those
Whose book of life is long since closed,
And shall I ever breathe the pure serene
Of Chapman’s Homer on a kindle screen?