Two beautiful people having sex
makes the old priest upset, even sad
but makes the old poet, William Butler Yeats, glad.
If you are going to be a poet, you’ve got to roll
with the beautiful and the good
in both body and soul.
Jealousy or hate
Might possibly be your fate.
The two are really in love; they kiss…
but we don’t need to see.
Mine is a dignified kind of poetry
Which nonetheless inquires
after all kinds of shadows and all kinds of fires.
A metaphor for life is: being lost in a dark wood
with no sign of the beautiful and the good.
But there are moments in poems like mine
when “Two beautiful people having sex” is a line
that gives you respite from the dark wood—
the obstacle, which in itself does no one any good.
You might complain I’m only trying to provoke—
But no. Do you think poetry is some kind of joke?
Ask yourself what kind of person you are.
Does the beautiful and the good appeal to you?
Does the star?