“Time, we both know, will decay You, and already / I’m scared of our divorce: I’ve seen some horrid ones.” W.H. Auden “Talking to Myself”

I am too old for much hope. Maybe none. It is too long since I awoke and rejoiced in the pleasures that were awaiting on the day ahead. It is a pity that the world must pay for the frustrations and bitterness of those whose girlfriends had to be recruited from Mrs Palm’s complaisant family of daughters, for whose single-handed kindnesses slang

“I kissed her on on her little wrinkles. In her wilted eyelids and along her forehead, at the edge of her hairline, there where she doesn’t know she exudes the scent of a flower”

The Easy Life