We lie under the sheet after making love, speaking of loneliness relieved in a book relived in a book so on that page the clot and fissure of it appears words of a man in pain a naked word entering the clot a hand grasping through bars: deliverance What happens between us has happened for centuries we know it from literature still it happens sexual jealousy outflung hand beating bed dryness of mouth after panting there are books that describe all this and they are useless