Making Peace with Time OR GAY in Old Lisbon

http://www.youtube.com/rogerNtaber

Regular readers will know I have posted several ‘place’ poems on the blog, some recently. In part, this is because I have somehow become a diehard realist while remaining an incurable romantic, and in part because there are gay men and women the world over and it can do no harm for my poems to reflect that. There is romance and realism a-plenty in many of the stories true-life people email me and which, more often than not, I subsequently try to weave into a poem.

My thanks go to everyone for sending, reading or both.

Now, time passes, times change, people change, too, while love - if fundamentally the same - adapts to all three, while, with any luck, simultaneously developing a new self-confidence and discovering something of that the ages-old wisdom necessary for self-fulfilment.

MAKING PEACE WITH TIME or G-A-Y IN OLD LISBON 

In old Lisbon one frantic June,

the Tango long since over,

we sang a love song to the moon

(A gypsy once told my fortune,

predicting I’d find a lover

in old Lisbon one frantic June)

Street musicians on to our tune,

the sun already ran for cover,

we sang a love song to the moon

Once young, you and I, too soon,

we gay men ran for cover…

in old Lisbon one frantic June

Years on, chanced to meet again,

the Tango spilling us over,

we sang a love song to the moon  

Older now, to prejudice immune,

once weak, now stronger;

it was in old Lisbon one June,

we sang a love song to the moon

Copyright R. N. Taber 2016

[Note: Tango - verse 1, line 2 - refers to Lisbon's annual International Tango Festival.]  

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