The Foamy Saddle Of The Enraptured Tide Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Tattooed in an inner thigh, I took her
Guitar to the South of Spain. We drank the vintage
And our hair curled gaily like a lover around our
Ears, the cones of 1/5th of our senses:
There was a lady all of stone waiting in the southeastern
Warf, and teal eggs in nests riding on the lighted foams,
And babies out of breath for wanting of their mother’s
Breasts: And other words, and hidden steps,
And dark unsweetened ways through the drying olive-
Groves: The whole country got drunk when, allegorically,
The old man died, and left his children his château,
And youth upon youth marching in the streets, just as
Clean as if they had not already had their required Civil
War, and the suicidal painters who decorated their landscapes
Just as madly as the occupations of butchers giving their
Leftover gristles to children’s rhymes: Things were yet changing,
The greatest dark-haired metamorphoses the enclosed
Sea could describe; and I loved her, just a little, where her hair
Fell over her left shoulder, down from the balcony, and
Gardens in the crumbled stones with the archaeologies of
Legionaries and petrified phalanxes stratified in the dun of
Time. Poets were still making love out on the slender streets,
And from the backs of motorbikes, and if I had been wiser,
I would have had them scribble a few lines on my meridian;
But I went home, sobering, still like a child to the fundamentals
Of the pseudonyms of patriarchs; but disused, I did not withhold
From my pubescent rebellions, and shirked the flaxen busses
Into school, and called them names, and epitaphs, and slang,
And meant to swim away, but the sea was too wide; and,
Inevitably, I was brought back home, by the foamy saddle of
The enraptured tide.