You are here

A Crab

Author: 
Thom Gunn

A crab labours across my thigh.

Oh. The first time I got crabs, I

 

experienced positively

Swiftian self-revulsion: me

 

unclean! But now I think instead

‘I must get some A2oo,’

 

and feel (picking it up, watching

its tiny beige legs, a live thing

 

that wriggles in all directions)

neither disgust nor indifference,

 

but a fondness, as for a pet.

I’m glad it’s nothing worse, and yet

 

it slipped and swung from one of us

to the other, unfelt because

 

the skin was alive with so much

else. It was a part of our touch.

From London Magazine, Vol. 1 No.11, February 1962