Hangover After A Late Spring Evening Drinking With Friends

Today, with heavy limbs and slamming head,
it is too much: too brash, too loud, too bright.
What seemed boundless and obtainable in
excited gabble, under canopies
with wine, the night refreshed by bursts of rain,
has fled with morning’s groan to higher ground.
Gone, the breathless swagger stalking our words,
banishing obstacle and barrier.
Gone, those gauche and brash pretensions, first born,
remember, when we hid far from the world;
years lived cloistered away from awkward truths,
homes made, briefly, in ivory towers
surrounded by moss-buttered quadrangles.
Now, in this yammering of city hours,
it seems unreal, a place that should not be,
where full breasts and naked legs are lit by
candlelight and fat lips drip Pinotage,
tempting the evening to finish in
rented rooms, making wild love to strangers.