Business Girls

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!