Classic Poem

All my sex life, I had been drifting
in and out of bed with beauties
or old men who made it
furtively worth my while,
for kicks, through boredom, but coolly maintained,
until lying in the sun of a tropical isle
as one of the beach boys hustling
the tourists, masks melted, lusting
for every tan body, cartwheeling, lucky
strike, blatantly whispering fucky, fucky ;
I saw this beginner, his small body
not even brown, bristling, facing
the hard horizon of sex beyond the beach —
thighs of the asthmatic Canadian,
wallet of the queen from Morecambe,
lips of the crewcut American plater,
hands of the frigid Brighton bookmaker —
nervously following the others.
Suddenly,
crushingly older, I carried him off the beach
in a vain attempt to save youth from the streets
for his innocence was worth more than those uncles could pay.

Now the season has faded, the tourists gone,
and the beach boys are taking each other
for free . . . In these months, I watched him evolve
from a cherry boy into a man, cool, a sexual
cashbox registering with a mechanical kiss
through pursed lips, the cost of short times.
For five more years, he'll be available as
my battered body once was.
Now I: shattered, the old man forced to pay,
He: the young body paid to oblige.
Retired, every night at his invitation, I feel
him stiff in my arms, on my lips, in my life;
and I find it so hard to believe that my youth was real.