What a wonderful little gem of a poem.

The Man Who’s Easy On The Eye Is On The Beach, from ‘YELP’

His wife has little plaits, crow’s feet. She teaches
him to unlearn Albanian, adopt demotic Greek
in which he learns to curse and swear,

to flit, sweet-talk, cook the boss’s books,
how to flatter, sell and never tear
well-sealed envelopes containing words

like ‘circumspect’, ‘discretion’.
Don’t talk to her, she’s on her own
You don’t know what she’s looking for,

if anything. She might be on the rebound
or fond of solitude, or full of grief,
she could be on the look-out

for someone with whom to correspond.
The man who’s easy on the eye
has surface shimmer like gold leaf

and if it’s stripped away you find
a swamp of dead brothers
the sister who jumped,

his mother’s burnt bread, smouldering,
his father’s broken shoulder
in its dirty sling.

This is the sealed envelope
even his mother-wife
can’t prise open.