The poem
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!
Reprinted with the permission of John Murray (Publishers) Ltd.
Anyone who can remember guysers - those upright, cylindrical gas water heaters by Ascot of the 1950s - might imagine this poem to be about the past. Ironically, in these days when there are more single person households than ever before, it seems to have a prophetic quality that is not confined to gender. Behind the facade of modern lifestyles and expensive city dwellings remain the 'unloved' ones who's busy working lives conceal and deny the loneliness of their existence.
Yes. this poem is about my eternal love for laura
It's about prostitutes and their sex with lack of love. He's portraying it as a rather miserable situation to be in. I don't think it has anything to with actual business women. Just lonely ones who sell their bodies.