Whispers of Immortality

 Webster was much possessed by death

 And saw the skull beneath the skin;

 And breastless creatures under ground

 Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

 Daffodil bulbs instead of balls

 Stared from the sockets of the eyes!

 He knew that thought clings round dead limbs

 Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

 Donne, I suppose, was such another

 Who found no substitute for sense;

 To seize and clutch and penetrate,

 Expert beyond experience,

 He knew the anguish of the marrow

 The ague of the skeleton;

 No contact possible to flesh

 Allayed the fever of the bone.

 .     .     .     .     .

 Grishkin is nice: her

 Russian eye is underlined for emphasis;

 Uncorseted, her friendly bust

 Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

 The couched Brazilian jaguar

 Compels the scampering marmoset

 With subtle effluence of cat;

 Grishkin has a maisonette;

 The sleek Brazilian jaguar

 Does not in its arboreal gloom

 Distil so rank a feline smell

 As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

 And even the Abstract Entities

 Circumambulate her charm;

 But our lot crawls between dry ribs

 To keep our metaphysics warm.