Relativity

by Jamie Grant

Extract

GETTING A GIRL INTO BED

Did any Lothario
struggling to undress a girl
with her contrivance
(disguised as coy resistance)
confront such an obstacle
as that posed by a four-year-old

who won't undress for the bath?
It was easier for Don Juan
to get a girl into bed
putting false ideas in her head
than to cross the bear-strewn,
doll-and-toy-cluttered path

to lure a child to sleep; yet had he guessed
the routines which would fill his life
if the sheep's membrane failed
him - voices which wailed
all night, a surly wife -
would he be impressed?

Such a fate is what Casanova fears,
of course, and takes pain
to avoid. Yet who is to measure
a fleeting pleasure
against what there is to gain,
having it in one's power to end those tears?