The Romantic Rumble Poem by Robert Rorabeck

They woke up the splintered morning
After the rumble:
The beach was jeweled with green beer bottles,
Iron knuckles, lost teeth and pride;
But the waves still came the same
Unending pugilists of fragile glass,
The shattered surrendering at the end of the line:
The blue beasts giving up into boot prints-
Into the young crab’s sidestepping dance at the prom;
No one had died, but they had wanted to,
They had beaten so badly into each other
The needs to surrender and change;
The clouds uneasy priests too light to approach:
They hung back in the alters of the crowd
Spent all that they had in the falling light,
The salt of blood cut with sea salt,
Maybe tears,
And the incomplete dialogues of youth;
Each species of bird crying in hungry neutrality
As the pretty faces were beaten into burger;
Until, in conclusion, the two left standing found
Love, and the motion changed:
The plain jane touched bruised lips to the slender john,
And they made impromptu romance in
The breaking waters of the Somme....