I have pinned your postcard to the wall behind my bed
the one so nicely sealed with a kiss
I have pinned it carefully
right beside the half-picture of you
in your jeans and tank top I'm sorry but I had to cut off your head from the photo because
I couldn't bare to have
you watching me do the ancient ritual dance-romance with Celia and Marjorie and Katie and Ursula
and all the other gazelles that have leapt into my life
with their dirty blonde braids
their creamy white tiger claws,
and their smooth clay lips that glowed red in the night above my half-closed eyes
I couldn't bare to have
you listening
while our gyrating hips were
bashing together the cymbals of life so loudly that
the neighbours howled in ribald harmony
and drummed the floor and ceiling in perfect rhythm
So now I lie in bed like a fervid rhinoceros
lie down and roll
roll in the cool mud memory of such wanton desire
and nothing seems a clear way out
of the jungle of my infidel life so far away from you
Yesterday, you wrote again
this time to say not how much you missed me
but to tell me that you won't be coming home
that Africa was more beautiful than you expected
and that you'd met Baboo Who
a brilliant artist
or, more importantly, a better lover than me
And to think, all I was worried about
was the malaria
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