17 APRIL 1993, Page 26

Domestic Interior

Red towel turban round your head, I surprise you, naked from the shower, caesarian and hysterectomy scars a crucifix on your soft turn, cradling tender tits giving way to gravity at last.

Beyond you in the bathroom mirror I loom, bald, grey-bearded with a dicky heart, arthritic hips, arm out, remembering . seeing the lissom girl whose nipples pointed upwards, waiting .. . Seventeen bare together in my bedroom mirror, my priapic jut a joke keeping us apart, Spring rain, outside a cuckoo calling . . . How lovely, lovely you were and are, soap in your eyes, stumbling, almost falling.

Selwyn Pritchard