The Summer Sun

The summer sun is well and truly out;
Your Londoner at last is free to bare
His pallid charms unto the outer air,
And let them wobble while he walks about.
Your London lady too, with pretty pout,
Will promenade, and marvel here and there
At those parboiling paunches, patched with hair
Like fungus on the belly of a trout.

O for a vulture's quill to draw this scene:
These carcasses well-smoked with traffic fumes,
This white and purple butcher's window-space!
Then, London, would I trace with pen-point keen
The dermal carcinoma as it blooms
Upon the sizzling rasher of your face.

Varlon Grutcher