Sending Prostitutes To Sleep Poem by gershon hepner

SENDING PROSTITUTES TO SLEEP


Private rites of magic can
no longer send the prostitutes to sleep,
because there is no temple fan
with pockets that go very deep
prepared today to pay their price,
unless, awake, these women do
the sort of acts, not once but twice,
that in the old days they all knew
and did asleep, but now cannot
accomplish till they are awake.
Perhaps the fall of Rome is what
forced them to stay awake and fake
what they could once do while they slept.
O tempora, o mores!
Where have they gone, the women kept
by men to be their willing whores?

Unendowed today with wealth,
I hide from them my trousered legs,
not only to protect my health,
but to avoid all rubbered sex,
which since the virus came to Rome
is now de rigueur when you figure
the fact that spermicidal foam
will not protect erected rigor.
Reindeer may still move across
the northern lands, but I count sheep
while in my bed I lie and toss
around until I safely sleep
the only lass who lets me graze
as safely as girls once in Rome’s
great temples would, in bygone days
now buried in the catacombs.

Inspired by a poem I heard W.H. Auden read on a CD:

The Fall of Rome
The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar’s double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.


12/31/08