Sensuality

By Kenneth Slessor

FEELING hunger and cold, feeling

Food, feeling fire, feeling

Pity and pain, tasting

Time in a kiss, tasting

Anger and tears, touching

Eyelids with lips, touching

Plague, touching flesh, knowing

Blood in the mouth, knowing

Laughter like flame, holding

Pickaxe and pen, holding

Death in the hand, hearing

Boilers and bells, hearing

Birds, hearing hail, smelling

Cedar and sweat, smelling

Petrol and sea, feeling

Hunger and cold, feeling

Food, feeling fire. . . .

Feeling.