Edith Sitwell and the Carnal World

6

Sacheverell thinks my childhood was untrue—
that I invented slick Doctor Rack and Screw
and our awful parents. Locked into what he couldn’t see,
I bent my nose and back to books and read aloud
so my brothers too could ride the rev,
the hum, the poetry that comes from facing
whatever happens in the same direction.
Osbert was old enough, and of course the painter
already knew what it took to place a hand
over something so like another’s ticking heart.
As he accumulated more years than two,
Sachie continued not to grieve. And yet
when we were asked who was the pretty baby in the painting,
mine was always the cadence he most believed.