There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shores,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more...
- Lord Byron
I see them standing at the formal gates
Of their former colleges.
I see him strolling out
Under the ochre sandstone arch,
The red tiles glinting like bent plates
Of blood behind his head.
I see her with a few light books at her hip
Standing at the pillar made of tiny
Bricks with the wrought iron gates
Still open behind her,
Its sword-tips black in the May air
They are about to graduate
They are about to get married
They are kids, they are dumb,
All they know is they are innocent,
They would never hurt anybody
I want to go up to them and say
“Stop, don’t do it,
She is the wrong woman
He’s the wrong man
You are going to do things
You cannot imagine you would ever do.
You are going to do bad things to children
You are going to suffer
In ways you never heard of
You are going to want to die”
I want to go up to them there
In the late May sunlight and say it.
But I don’t do it, I want to live.
I take them up like the male and female
Paper dolls, and bang them together
At the hips like chips of flint, as if
To strike sparks from them, i say:
“Do what you are going to do,
And I will tell about it”
