Fragment Of A Novel (More Of A Prose Poem Really) Poem by Paul Hansford

He saw one evening a young woman in a red dress, and he remembered being in Luxor, sitting on a hotel balcony, looking out over the Nile, watching all day as the shadows shifted on the cliffs above the opposite bank, as the colours changed from ochre to gold, from pink to violet, and how he had felt so completely at peace. And seeing the girl in her red dress, with her hair up showing the curve of her neck and throat, with her easy, natural smile and her confident air of self-possession, he knew the same feeling; he could have sat and looked at her for hours and asked for nothing more to make the evening perfect.