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He steps out of the standard lamp's narrow stardom
into the shade that dare not speak its name.
Brylcreem and the immaculate swank
of pink-piped pyjamas and silk His bathrobe
set off linebacker shoulders.
Doris sings in the shower,
sings high in the plashy ecstasy of wet hand and sud:
Que sera, sera ...
She has peeled off Day for the day and left her
a crumpled body stocking of apple pie on the tiles.
She is doing her own thing for once,
singing a wet tease for the habitual scopophiliac of the lens.
The zoom drive whirrs itself to a close up:
the soap down of the girl next door
who has forgotten to pull the blinds
just for fun.
From out the left
Hitchcock is casting himself
against type onto the shower curtain—
everything has had bubbles in it so far, after all.
Botticelli might have styled her as reaching out
for the long, blue slab of the soap,
made to catch her rise or bend to cup her breasts
beneath the lick of the water's multitudinous tongues.
Rock's away with the Forty-Niners ,
the pectorals gleaming like trophies from ancient Greece.
While inside the flickering peepshow of 35mm
Doris is bathing mid-frame,
caught on the half shell of the shower tray singing
whatever will be will be...
married, cinematographically, to a man who wants a man,
filmed by the outline of a cameo,
the future's not ours to see...
watched by us. Cut!