the air, deeply

In the last days of my father's life
I tried to name his smell--like yeast,
ochre catalyst feeding in liquid,
eating malt, excreting mash--
sour ferment, intoxicant, exaltant, the
strong drink of my father's sweat,
I bent down over the hospital bed
and smelled it. It smelled like wet cement,
a sidewalk of crushed granite, quartz
and Jurassic shale, or the sour odor
of the hammered copper humidor
full of moist, bent, blackish
shreds of pipe tobacco; or the smelling-salts
tang of chlorine on the concrete floor of the
changing room at the pool in summer;
or the faint mold from the rug in his house
or the clouded pungence of the mouth and sputum
of a drinking man. And it was also the socket
of a man's leather shoe, acid with
polish and basic with stale socks--
always, in his smell, the sense
of stain and the attraction of the stain,
the harmony of oil and metal,
as if the life of manufacture and
industry were using his body
as a gland for their sweat. On the first day,
it rose on his forehead, a compound disc
of sweat, I brought it off on my lips.
After his last breath, he lay there
tilted on his side, not moving,
not breathing, making no sound,
but he smelled the same, that fresh tainted
industrial domestic male smell,
dark, reflecting points of light.
I had thought the last thing between us
would be a word, a look, a pressure
of touch, not that he would be dead
and I would be bending over him
smelling him, breathing him in
as you would breathe the air, deeply, before going into exile.

Sharon Olds, "His Smell"