Edith Sitwell and the Carnal World

2

That year I got “The Rape of the Lock” by heart
instead of “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck”
(not that poem’s right name). I learned “The Rape of the Lock”
not only because my parents deemed it so improper
but because coiled in the metonymic was my hope
that if new worlds could be sprung from a single lock
small me might be fanned to larger, warmer you.
Besides, I loved the billet-doux, coiffure posed
as subject, and that canny lovers may manage
to couple handily with each couplet
without quite touching. A lack turned luck indeed.
As if a girl with a book stands in for boys on decks
while something both licks the stalled-out amidships higher
and also retrieves the broom that beats it back.