Who wants to live, and yet who doesn’t dare
Enjoy the hidden pleasures of the night;
Who keeps his mind immaculately white,
His eyes averted, safe from every pair
Of nyloned legs; whose one and only care
Pursues a course he vaguely knows as “right”,
May wait too long before he sees the light.
Who can be fair who to himself’s unfair?
Then, after time has passed, he starts to chide
His friends and neighbors on the way they grew
Into their evil ways ignoring this:
He may be but a jelly-fish beside
The honest man who, on some slender clue,
Parts with his soul for just one deadly kiss!
by Ray Romine Friday, August 16, 1946
