Habitats Of Unicorns And Mermaids Poem by Robert Rorabeck

What passions leave by themselves
From the sinking ship:
Aged body like a burned love letter
To the gods with gasoline on their lips,
Their beds the fireplaces of
Unmatched juvenile truancy:
When, the poets in their youths,
Could not be touched—virgins masturbating,
Like great, muscle bound men with swords—
Giving themselves as heirlooms and
Talismans to their muses—
Losing themselves in books,
As the girls they loved lost their
Virginity to better endowed young men—
Girls who went out into the courtyards with
Tennis-shoes and heartbeats—
And it was there that the sun struck across
Their unclothed necks
And seemed to want to get closer to them from
A million miles away, or more—
Where the teachers had no thought about such
Things—
But the girls grew up and married one or two
Men who also had no such thought about such
Things—and the boys who once dreamed
Of them married other women themselves,
Women they had accidentally called from so
Far away—across so many canals that they
Became oceans—
But still, in the fall, they sold pumpkins,
And the children grew up from them such as
Weeds—so it was that even their beautiful dreams
Were not enough: they vanished,
Just the same as the fabled habitats of unicorns
And mermaids.