I am in your sitting room cum kitchen cum study cum hall,
You have made tea and I have rolled a cigarette from your leather pouch.
The winter nights are coming now, your window looks high over the street,
High over the treetops that make the cemetery beyond the terraced houses,
Over the streetlights outside the pool hall where drunks fight sometimes,
late at night, and we watch them when we're awake,
over the new toilets where the heroin addicts hang around
waiting for their dealer before they go in and stay for hours,
sat on the floor in glorious filth, the world away, warmth in their veins.

I want to fuck you. We haven't fucked yet. You are in your nightie.
We talk. We talk of Africa. We talk about being lost. But not being lost in Africa.
You have a new job starting soon, you'll be moving away. I too am busy with my work.
The night silence creeps in behind passing cars that sweep by below,
along the long road into town or away into Romsey.
We are both waiting for an excuse that will let me stay tonight,
that will let me stay in your bed so that we can touch each other and
spend our power, in this time on earth.
We are waiting for an aperture to open in the night,
the streetlights flicked on hours ago and dance with trees and shadows,
a yellow pane of light on the window, you close the curtains,
it's getting late. I want to stay with you.

I don't love you. I know in myself I may not love for a long time.
It stuns me that so many hearts are broken, and I understand war now.
You ask if I'm going to stay tonight, though you don't say with you.
I could stay next door where I've been working.
I say I don't know and feel aroused.
You say if I do then could I give you a lift tomorrow,
and you smile entreatingly. I know I will love again.
Tonight I want to stay with you and fuck you hard and make you come.
But I don't know that. All I know is that I am burning to stay. My veins burn.
You move and suggest in some way that you want me and I grow harder.
I could never be with you. I could never love you.