Business Girls poem – John Betjeman poems | Poems and Poetry

From the geyser ventilators

Autumn winds are blowing down

On a thousand business women

Having baths in Camden Town

Waste pipes chuckle into runnels,

Steam’s escaping here and there,

Morning trains through Camden cutting

Shake the Crescent and the Square.

Early nip of changeful autumn,

Dahlias glimpsed through garden doors,

At the back precarious bathrooms

Jutting out from upper floors;

And behind their frail partitions

Business women lie and soak,

Seeing through the draughty skylight

Flying clouds and railway smoke.

Rest you there, poor unbelov’d ones,

Lap your loneliness in heat.

All too soon the tiny breakfast,

Trolley-bus and windy street!

 

***

 

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