DECEPTIONS

"Of course I had been drugged, and so heavily I did not regain consciousness till the next morning, when I discovered that I had been ruined. I was inconsolable, and cried like a child to be killed, or sent back to my aunt." -- report of young woman from Mayhew's Report on the London Poor, 1840s.
Even so distant, I can taste the grief,
Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.
The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief
Worry of wheels along the street outside
Where bridal London bows the other way;
And light, unanswerable, and tall and wide,
Forbids the scar to heal, and drives
Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day
Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare
Console you if I could. What can be said,
Except that suffering is exact, but where
Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?
For you would hardly care
That you were less deceived, out on that bed,
Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair
To burst into fulfilment's desolate attic.

--Philip Larkin.