The Instruments They Learn To Enjoy Poem by Robert Rorabeck

A sound of a sorority so young pantomiming
What they know they must become in the courtyard:
The sun strums cavalier,
It plays over their bodices and their legs like rivers:
How many of these will disappear,
How many will come away into one another, and spend
Their next tomorrows looking up at the throats and eyes
Of immodest business suits,
But now they are here, sweltering, making tongues and eyes
Of themselves,
Laughing like drunken beauty, while all of the alabaster cars
Rest in the parking lots of their grazing,
And my words go down hard, for I have thrown all of my
Bouquets all over them,
Those nudities that I have clothed so immodestly; and just in
That one stretch of sun they are bathing,
A galleria that wont take very long aging gracefully,
Forgetting how they belonged as restively as the deep smoothness
Of perfect stones placed together in the courtyard
Like inconsequential prayers,
Engines so perfectly unmotivated but as ready as lips who
Whisper closer to the instruments they learn to enjoy.