Who Let Off?
‘Did you let off?’ That’s what
we boys would ask in class
when a whiff of flatulence
spread from someone’s short pants
and merged with the pong -
our roomful of teenage bodies
in after lunch and a sweating
half-hour chasing a ball
over short-trimmed grass, or
bouncing ball in the fives-courts.
Flatulence? we didn’t know
the word, nor do I recall
the word fart at school.
Some genteel inhibition
from home censored the word.
Dad, if he thought his fart
had been overheard, muttered
Pardon. A burp, and you’d
hear Excuse me. Aunt Maria
would say: eating that, dear,
would only bring on wind. Yet,
at school a prolonged burp
was a comic accomplishment
provoking rival attempts
and claims to be champion.
Before lunch, our room’s
acoustics had us all over-hearing
someone’s tummy-rumbling.
How long till lunch-break, sir?
Few of us had wrist-watches.
Not till serving in the Army -
eighteen-year-old conscripts -
did I hear, after lights-out
in our long dormitory sheds
of parallel grey-blanketed beds,
the art of prolonged farting.
Who let off? someone with brothers
or years away at school, boarding.
I’m lying here in the dark room
by my wife. Her quiet exhalation
says she’s asleep; the dogs on their beds
just beyond ours are quiet.
Can I quietly let off? or if
on her next inhalation a whiff
from me reaches her, can I shift
the blame to a dog, and be let off?
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