Shower

From the metal poppy this good blast of trance arriving as shock, private cloudburst blazing down, worst in a boarding-house greased tub, or a barrack with competitions, best in a stall, this enveloping passion of Australians: tropics that sweat for you, torrent that braces with its heat, inflames you with its chill, action sauna, inverse bidet, sleek vertical coruscating ghost of your inner river, reminding all your fluids, streaming off your points, awakening the tacky soap to blossom and ripe autumn, releasing the squeezed gardens, smoky valet smoothing your impalpable overnight pyjamas off, pillar you can step through, force-field absolving love's efforts, nicest yard of the jogging track, speeding aeroplane minutely steered with two controls, or trimmed with a knurled wheel. Some people like to still this energy and lie in it, stirring circles with their pleasure in it, but my delight's that toga worn on either or both shoulders, fluted drapery, silk whispering to the tiles, with its spiralling, frothy hem continuous round the gurgle-hole' this ecstatic partner, dreamy to dance in slow embrace with after factory-floor rock, or even to meet as Lot's abstracted merciful wife on a rusty ship in dog latitudes, sweetest dressing of the day in the dusty bush, this persistent, time-capsule of unwinding, this nimble straight well-wisher. Only in England is its name an unkind word; only in Europe is it enjoyed by telephone. Anonymous submission.