The speaker recalls a small, unglamorous scene from a rented room: after making love, the woman he loved needs to use the washbasin to pee, and she is shy about being watched. Only moments earlier she was fully open to him, naked on the bed, yet now she grows embarrassed. The poem lingers on plain details, such as the mirror, her dark hair, her face and shoulders, the single faucet turned on.
What the speaker feels is harder to pin down. The opening, "I approach with such / a careful tremor," suggests nervousness and a fear of seeming foolish as he tells this. But the memory is clearly precious to him. The mood is quiet, intimate and a little awkward, without being crude. The final line leaves a question hanging: what can love learn from seeing someone in a moment of vulnerability, when nothing is performed? The poem suggests that real closeness may live in these unguarded, ordinary moments.