“I have heard said there is great danger in the body” – From Yeats, “Michael Robarts and the Dancer”

Admiring young men lounged in beanbag

chairs, plucking sweated grapes, fanned,

framed by branches of wildest origins, damned

for your wandering eye. Why learn from bright hag

the danger of the body when you can corrupt and divide,

inclusive vision of lust suffering all

comers: ballerinas in swan-armed fall

to the hands of such men as grasp anything in sight,

bodies stirred from pronounced motion. Exercise

caution before unlaughing clergy because

the Book is forbidden save only for a few:

Tiptoe, wipe smirk, pluck eyes—

offenseless—saying nothing contrary to laws,

for maleficial substance can never be blithe or true.