Too hot and humid to do more than drowse
And slip – who knows how brief the interims? –
Into a chafed unconsciousness,
And rouse;
Too clammy for the slur and press
Of fabric or each other on our limbs,

We slide apart across a moon-slicked sheet.
And all the intermittent anaglyphs
Of you the moon is working to
Complete,
I see each time I wake and view
Your light-shaped body as it stirs and shifts.

Now you lie flat, but twisted to the side,
One sheet a failing neckline, and I watch
The contour of your clavicles
Divide
The shadow, and the shade that pools
Between them in the suprasternal notch.

Later, and you are offered to the air,
That sheet kicked to your ankles, to display
The image Eve was fashioned in,
And there –
The world’s unspoken origin,
So openly depicted by Courbet.

Now mummylike, you’re swathed, although three fingers
Push free. Now, from behind on hip and thigh,
The damp percale’s a pale caress
That lingers
Like skin on skin and would express
Its lapsing outline with a tactile sigh.

The nearest part of mine would do as much.
Yet these abandonments in which you’re cast
And tendered somehow countermand
That touch,
And hold you only to be scanned
And intimately memorised. At last

Morning approaches and the moon is swamped
With day. All of those figures, though, survive
In you, it’s you that they comprise,
And prompt
Your mind to waken, and your eyes,
And you to turn, now sunlit and alive.

 

 

CONTENTS: MARCH 2011