Poems (Forrest)/Perfumery

PERFUMERY

A naked, wide-hipped woman, looking through
The bushy blackness of her falling hair,
Pressed in her palms the petals of a flower.
And there arose like incense on the air
A haunting breath of almonds; and the scent
Clung to her fingers when she locked them tight
About the thick neck of her conquering man,
Hot from the hunting, while he sniffed
As lightly as a pointer dog, the trail
Of springtime on the brown skin of his bride.
Then Nature laughed, to set another snare
With odorous seductions for his race.

A Queen in Egypt, finding her lord cold,
Consulted that wise Shaman, who distilled
From secret script, in red-hot crucibles,
A priceless perfume. . . 'Twas but yesterday
Some excavator found her mummied arms
Crossed over a small vial wrought in gold
And lapis lazuli; and though it held
Only a whiff of fragrance, 'twas more sweet
Than blossomed acres in a mile of bloom!

A Persian woman knelt before a fire
Of spices smouldering in a copper pan.
A great red ruby weighed her shallow brow,
An orange topaz lit her plaited hair,
Her round arms faded into velvet night,
Her silken garments rustled in the dark.
Only her pale face showed above the glow,
And one faint gleam of ivory ankles bare
Above the red morocco silver-stitched,
Of heel-less slippers. Then from out the dusk
There came two yellow, thin and awful hands
To grip about the satin of her throat,
And, as she strangled, she could taste the smoke
Of stolen incense from the High Priest's jar.

A lady in a ruff and stomacher,
With ropes of pearls dependent to her waist,
Crept down a stairway, when the clamorous rooks
On a grey English dawning told that day
Had come with black frosts to the frozen pools
And trees that creaked and shuddered in the cold.
An old man sleeping in a shuttered room,
With wrinkled hand against a sharpened sword,
Smelled roses as she passed. He woke . . and moaned . .
Her lover, too, smelled roses as he died.

I take the stopper from a phial to-day—
A slender thing of crystal, with a pearl
In blue enamel on a coat of arms,
And from the amber liquid prisoned there
(Perhaps ten drops to prove ten thousand flowers!),
I see the ghost of long dead women rise
With scented palms and little perfumed ears,
Rare waters for the hollow in the throat
Where favoured lips may sip them! Creams for breasts
(That need them not!) to make the curves more fair;
The float of powders and of patchouli. . .
Crushed violets and potpourri of the rose,
The secret ambras that dark Egypt knew:
The clean geranium scents of Old Japan:
White rose of English brides, and orange-flower,
And jasmines of bejewelled dancing girls—
And all their feet are dancing still to-day
Over the hearts and brains of cozened men!