Anosmia

Without it, what is lemon, what is mint? –
Coffee and chocolate, caffeinated brown.
Ghosted by a sense that takes no hint,
I feel let down.

It’s hardly tragedy that I can’t tell
The milk’s gone off, eggs rotten. It’s no joke
With other things though – no internal bell
That signals smoke

(The toast burned or the house on fire). Sweet
I have, and bitter, I have sour and salt,
But without smell, no flavour is complete.
There’s no … gestalt.

It’s something I’d predict of old, old age,
This weaning from the welter of the world
The better, perhaps, to leave it. I’m no sage,
I’d rather the impearled

Jasmine flowers – fragrance of the stars –
Light up the brain’s grey matter, and the hurt
Of memory, the human musk of ours
In an unwashed shirt.

‘To have a nose for’– isn’t it a skill,
A wry intelligence, a kind of knack?
What thought trails do I lose, untraceable,
What wisdom lack?

I miss the laundry scent they call ‘unscented’.
Like a depression, it makes it hard to write.
What is is less, less there, half uninvented,
And I, not quite.

But there are days I almost have a whiff:
I slice a lemon open for the crisp
Sun-saturated redolence, and sniff
And stand in the eclipse.