Poem 3: A Leisure Centre is Also a Temple of Learning

Sue Boyle, “A Leisure Centre Is Also a Temple of Learning”

The honey coloured girl in the women’s changing room

is absorbed in making her body more beautiful:

she has flexed and toned every muscle with a morning swim

and showered away the pool chemicals

using an aromatic scrub and a gentle exfoliant.

Lithe as a young leopard, she has perfect bone structure:

her secret cleft is shaved as neatly as a charlatan’s moustache.

In dreamy abstractedness she moisturises then spray perfumes

every part that might be loved. Her long hands

move in rhythm like a weaver’s at a loom –

tipped throat, underchin, the little kisspoints below her ears,

the nuzzle between her breasts, her willow thighs.

She brushes her hair so clean it looks like a waterfall.

A bee could sip her.

She is summer cream slipped over raspberries.

She is so much younger than the rest of us.

She looked around.

We twelve are the chorus:

we know what happens next.

 

Key features/themes

 This poem brings together the modern and the ancient, the secular and the religious, in a surprising and witty way. The title encapsulates this lively dynamic: describing a leisure centre as a ‘temple’ is unusual and instantly intriguing.

For the majority of the poem the temple seems to belong to the young girl who is both goddess and worshipper combined. Modern references (‘flexed and toned’, ‘chemicals’, ‘exfoliant’) give way to language which is reminiscent of the Old Testament’s Song of Songs/Song of Solomon – lavish, exotic and sensual. The girl is compared to all kinds of natural beauty – ‘leopard’, ‘sand’, ‘willow’, ‘waterfall’, ‘listening bird’, ‘cream’, ‘raspberries’. This sense of exotic beauty is matched by her actions as she performs her elaborate cleansing ritual. In essence, the girl is worshipping her own body and its potential for love and sensual pleasure.

The main tonal shift in the poem comes in the last three lines which are blunt in their warning about ‘what happens next’. Each line is end-stopped and stark in its effect. The focus shifts from an individual to a group of women who become the ‘chorus’. In Greek drama the chorus form a single entity commenting on the dramatic action. They represent the general population of the particular story, in contrast to those characters taking centre stage which tend to be famous heroes, kings, gods and goddesses. The word might also refer to the chorus of the women or ‘daughters’ of Jerusalem who appear in the Song of Songs as an audience/witness to the sensual love of the protagonists. Finally, these lines also point to a post-Christian symbolism, the 12 women suggesting the 12 Apostles who followed Jesus.

While the theme of youth and ageing might be a serious one, the pleasure the poem takes in the language used to describe the girl, and the dark humour of its ending, give the poem a light and enjoyable touch.

 

Links to other poems

For a very different take on the gap between youth and experience, look at Helen Dunmore’s ‘To My Nine-Year-Old Self’, where the relationships between observer and observed is more intimate.

Further resources

There’s a nice statement by Sue Boyle about her poetic journey here (under the ‘The work’ tab): www.poetrybusiness.co.uk/sue-boyle