Reading Pornography in Old Age

Unbridled licentiousness with no holds barred,

Immediate and mutual lust, satisfiable

In the heat, upon demand, aroused again

And satisfied again, lechery unlimited.

Till space runs out at the bottom of the page

And another pair of lovers, forever young,

Prepotent, endlessly receptive, renews

The daylong, nightlong, interminable grind.

How decent it is, and how unlike our lives

Where “fuck you” is a term of vengeful scorn

And the murmur of “sorry, partner” as often heard

As ever in mixed doubles or at bridge.

Though I suspect the stuff is written by

Elderly homosexuals manacled to their

Machines, it’s mildly touching all the same,

A reminiscence of the life that was in Eden

Before the Fall, when we were beautiful

And shameless, and untouched by memory:

Before we were driven out to the laboring world

Of the money and the garbage and the kids

In which we read this nonsense and are moved

At all that was always lost for good, in which

We think about sex obsessively except

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.