The Atmosphere Is Not A Perfume

Based on extracts from the Walt Whitman poem ‘Song of Myself, Leaves of Grass’. The entire project has been assembled in CD format (August 2000) but is no longer available for viewing.

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this atmosphere is not a perfume
but is the presence that still remains
in contours shaped when you rose to leave
with morning

I am embracing the slow escape of warmth
to find comfort in this chilling room
making your image in
the smoke of my own breath
and half day-dreaming

what I can’t do is hold you
grasp as I might to catch the illusion
there is nothing but the trace
left in a tepid fold of cloth
that holds a whisper of the smell of you
and it is my skin that lies alone
bare against the sheets
and last desire

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© Frank Prem, 2000

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