She was too beautiful,

            He decided

            When she rose the bedsheet slipped 

            To the wooden floor 

            Strewn with light,

            Thin muslin drapes luffed

            He remembered a song, the perspiration

            Just beneath her breasts,

            His awkward hands

            She left the bedsheet where it lay

            And with her tongue a poem crept in his ear

            Before he could have wondered how or

            Where she learned such things

            Looking back along the years

            He thought of the fallen bedsheet,

            The muslin drapes, the angle of the sun,

            Her patience with his youth,

            And how he pressed and pressed

            With nowhere else to go

            Maybe it was wrong, his ardour 

            So unformed, breaking and crashing

            Against her beauty in the scattered light –

            Could love be so unfrayed?