I sit at my machine, <br />Hour long beside me Vera aged nineteen, <br />Babbles her sweet and innocent tale of sex. <br /> <br />Her boy, she hopes, will prove <br />Unlike his father in the act of love, <br />Twelve children are too many for her taste. <br /> <br />She looks sidelong, blue-eyed <br />And tells a girlish story of a bride <br />With the sweet licence of Arabian queens. <br /> <br />Her child, she says, saw light <br />Minute for minute, nine months from the night <br />The mother first lay in her lover’s arms. <br /> <br />She says a friend of hers <br />Is a man’s mistress who gives jewels and furs <br />But will not have her soft limbs cased in stays.<br /><br />Lesbia Harford<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/machinist-talking/
