Something Nasty In The Bookshop

Between the Gardening and the Cookery Comes the brief Poetry shelf; By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology Offers itself. Critical, and with nothing else to do, I scan the Contents page, Relieved to find the names are mostly new; No one my age. Like all strangers, they divide by sex: Landscape Near Parma Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex, So does Rilke and Buddha. “I travel, you see”, “I think” and “I can read' These titles seem to say; But I Remember You, Love is my Creed, Poem for J., The ladies’ choice, discountenance my patter For several seconds; From somewhere in this (as in any) matter A moral beckons. Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart Or squash it flat? Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart; Girls aren’t like that. We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff Can get by without it. Women don’t seem to think that’s good enough; They write about it. And the awful way their poems lay them open Just doesn’t strike them. Women are really much nicer than men: No wonder we like them. Deciding this, we can forget those times We stayed up half the night Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes, And couldn’t write.