Aubade

I love you in your beret. There’s no doubt
you look as good or better still without it,
especially with your hair frizzed softly out –
there’s not a man alive who’d dare to doubt it.
But that red beret is your kind of outfit.
It glows with you; it hints the open air –
has this to say (indeed it seems to shout it):
the difference between beautiful and fair.

I love you on the ’phone. Not listening
so much as watching you explode in German
in sheer delight at what a girlfriend’s doing –
or not doing, rather, Carnival Day. For no man
in a bloody mask would get her kiss! You woman
dancing and speaking, volleying down the air
your thoughts, your mind . . . insist on the least common –
the difference between beautiful and fair.

I love you in your bed. For if I adore
the wonderful star of your face, and body flowing
down, and about . . . much more there is, much more
I am united with that’s not for showing.
For in a singing closeness is such knowing
of tender souls . . . as match-strikes on the air
(like the ’phone full of life, like beret glowing)
the difference between beautiful and fair!