For when I am away
            Each hour leaves its bruise

Late home, my cab drives down
Small streets whose names I love;
The evening is ripe
With sparrows and a breeze;
An outside light shines round
And tightly holds the house

            There is no life on earth
            I would not spend with you

                                 *

Love is a standing to attention. Yes,
No man can argue long against a truth
That smashes hard into his deepest life

It's Spring: the maple tree speaks of her lips,
The curve around her bottom that I love.
But no one sane will ever quote a tree

So I must tell her how this little world
Is bigger now only because of her,
And how this massive universe makes sense

Only because of her (it does, it does),
And how this ordinary room is love
And truth because she walks through it all day

                                 *

You whispered in my ear. You wanted me
To touch you somewhere new,

And while one hand was roaming round my thigh
Your other one took mine

And led it like a child around your waist
To where your dress was loose,

And then you held me hard with both your arms
And said I was the one.

(You said I was a one
That day you held me hard with both your arms:

It made your dress go loose—
'Like when I was a girl' —around your waist;

Your hand was taking mine,
The other one was roaming round my thigh,

'To touch you somewhere new'
You whispered in my ear. You wanted me.)

                                 *

Let's go to bed all afternoon
(But pull that blind down to the sill,
The sunlight must not see us here)

I don't mind giving day the flick
(My fingers can unbutton jeans,
My tongue knows yours and where it goes)

This darkness gives me all your voice
(Your cries are carved into my back,
My hands will wander here and there)

But there are little hairs I love
(I feel them high upon your thighs,
They make my fingertips go faint)

And there's a mole I want to kiss
(It's on your shoulder, that I know,
But which one is a mystery)

So raise that blind an inch or two
(The breeze will push in when it can,
The blind will bang against the pane)

                                 *

It is a dark green ivy afternoon
In Princes Hill as rain falls through vast trees
Into the little garden where we live
     On summer days.

It's late December and the clocks have stopped
While people watch their windows come alive
And old tin roofs out back get hopping mad
     And gutters booze.

Last week we burned our flesh, but now we baste
While smoky jazz just cruises down the lane
And makes out with our cat beneath a car
     While we're in bed,

The sheets all trampled underneath our feet,
Those lyrics touching us as night comes on:
Something about a day spent drinking wine
     And getting laid.