Sunshine !!!

 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”