stages

I’ve heard it claimed
that when we’re young
we know a happiness that will not be
surpassed in any of our later days.
In fact, it’s said,  life’s destiny’s
at things that cannot help but dim
and make unreachable the memory
of  how content we were
at play within the lilting years just after infancy
 
For time’s cruel hand will all too soon
immerse us in a growing consciousness  
of how much life is really  
nothing but a  vale of tears.
 
Oh, yes. There’s something to be said
in favour of the Edening of youth’s naivete.
And yet nostalgia does not measure up
in all of its protected pleasurings  
to those inhabited, displayed,  
inside the types of carnal knowledge
that becomes available
to be enjoyed by those enhanced by  puberty
and its bestowing of the raw ability to ken
and ken again
the joys of sex.  
Praise innocence.
But give to me the energy,
the all-consuming and elating sense
of joyousness,
the upswelled, widened, wilded heart,
inherent in concupiscence.