Short hair, shoes and shirts are required in the
local village, along with all sorts of normative demands,
mandated by years---centuries---of custom and tradition:
confinements of societal expectation,
founded on silly and prejudiced inhibition,
intended to place a stifling and fatal suppression
upon that kind of Love's exquisitely tender expression,
adorned with all sorts of intimate joys---
such intimate relationships between adolescent boys.
Long-haired, shoeless and shirtless, they come
(here, and with each other) to this secluded shore.
Their beauty is more than the total sum
(if such could ever be known) of the stars
gathered in summary constellation.
Beneath their baggy trousers' cuffs, their bared footsteps cluster
upon the eagerly receptive, tide-dampened sands.
No shame the village can muster
obtains here; neither abuses nor mars
even the least of the boys' blisses,
exchanged with candor and no deceit:
taste and warmth of wet kisses,
clasping of agile, and wandering, hands
with the adjacency of their bared feet.
You know that Music and Poetry
can only provide the metaphor
(perhaps, also, a simile)
that conveys this delectation,
which you will preserve in your agile memory,
after long and intricate observation,
remembered, like their beauty without flaw,
tonight, next week, and the inevitable return to Warsaw.
Moments of such delicate pleasure were praised in Alexandria.
J-Called