Unbridled licentiousness with no holds barred,
Immediate and mutual lust,
In the heat, upon demand, aroused
And satisfied again, lechery unlimited.
Till space runs out at the bottom of the
And another pair of lovers, forever young,
Prepotent, endlessly receptive,
The daylong, nightlong, interminable grind.
How decent it is, and how unlike our
Where “fuck you” is a term of vengeful
And the murmur of “sorry, partner” as often
As ever in mixed doubles or at bridge.
Though I suspect the stuff is written
Elderly homosexuals manacled to
Machines, it’s mildly touching all the same,
A reminiscence of the life that was in
Before the Fall, when we were
And shameless, and untouched by memory:
Before we were driven out to the laboring
Of the money and the garbage and the
In which we read this nonsense and are
At all that was always lost for good, in
We think about sex obsessively
During the act, when our minds tend to wander.
Howard Nemerov was born on February 29th, 1920 in New York.
He died of cancer at his home in University City,
Missouri on July 5th 1991.
