Golden-cheeked, it glided in above a scarf
of the kind worn by men who play chess:
I saw your apple before I saw your face.
And marvellous how you could make it last
strategically, it seemed, by eating less
and talking more, as though each bit by bit that passed
your lips were a course in some slowed repast;
your restraint! I was ravenous, riveted to my place.

My Braeburn I bite at eight o’clock; you lovely thing,
you made me do it. The window suspends
the creases of the evening sky, my clothes fold to the floor
like hot towels. Vivid as the crimson curtains, I sing
canticles from the second storey as if all flesh depends
on the sinking of teeth through air: premise of our rapport.