Edith Sitwell and the Carnal World

5

Since everything needs an engine, my brother offers
Chesham Place’s electric fan, the first we’d seen.
We’d return from sitting, rush to fiddle it
from slow buzz to blur and forget, almost,
its usual look of stunned, five-petalled flower,
sideways paddlewheel schematic, or the mouth
of a woman poised to sing (“Helicopter,”
Osbert would whisper later from the whirlwind—1942).
Since I knew what hoists a windless sail,
sets grief to cool, expects to grow more lovely still,
I enjoyed the creaky twirl of skirts.
Why should passion ignore the strictly mechanical?
Let each, by egging on the other, abjure the claim
of Mother’s agues, chilblains and lumbagos!