Sweet Things by Thom Gunn

Sweet Things

He licks the last chocolate ice cream

from the scabbed corners of his mouth.

Sitting in the sun on a step

outside the laundromat,

mongoloid Don turns his crewcut head

and spies me coming down the street.

‘Hi!’ He says it with the mannered

enthusiasm of a fraternity brother.

‘Take me cross the street!?’ part

question part command. I hold

the sticky bunch of small fingers in mine

and we stumble across. They sell

peaches and pears over there,

the juice will dribble down your chin.

He turns before I leave him,

saying abruptly with the same

mixture of order and request

‘Gimme a quarter!?’ I

don’t give it, never have, not to him,

I wonder why not, and as I

walk on alone I realize

it’s because his seven-year old mind

never recognizes me, me

for myself, only says hi

for what he can get, quarters to

buy sweet things, one after another,

he goes from store to store, from

candy store to ice cream store to

bakery to produce market, unending

quest for the palate’s pleasure. Then

out to panhandle again,

more quarters, more sweet things.

 

My errands are toothpaste,

vitamin pills and a book of stamps.

No self-indulgence there.

But who’s this coming up? It’s

John, no Chuck, how

could his name have slipped my mind.

Chuck gives a one-sided smile, he stands

as if fresh from a laundromat,

a scrubbed cowboy, Tom Sawyer

grown up, yet stylish, perhaps

even careful, his dark hair

slicked back in the latest manner.

When he shakes my hand I feel

a dry finger playfully bending inward

and touching my palm in secret.

‘It’s a long time

since we got together,’ says John.

Chuck, that is. The warm teasing

tickle in the cave of our handshake

took my mind off toothpaste,

snatched it off, indeed.

How handsome he is in

his lust and energy, in his

fine display of impulse.

Boldly ‘How about now?” I say

knowing the answer. My boy

I could eat you whole. In the long pause

I gaze at him up and down and

from his blue sneakers back to the redawning

one-sided smile. We know our charm.

We know delay makes pleasure great.

In our eyes, on our tongues,

we savour the approaching delight

of things we know yet are fresh always.

Sweet things. Sweet things.