Blistering Of The Hot Brigade Poem by Robert Rorabeck

A blistering of the hot brigade
Makes youngish girls swoon and kiss and
Gasp for love in the sweltering shade—
Their eyes hung over from mad delight
From the houses they have fled
To the meetings of each other at the end of
A starry metamorphosis:
As they kiss, the horses kiss too—puckering
Across the fences speckled from the shade of
The apple orchard—but soon they will
Be off again: girls riding to the sea or the sky,
To become mermaids or stewardesses—
Who once held our hearts like throbbing pomegranates
In the crèche of their fingers—and we might
Swear to ourselves that they loved us,
But they loved one another all the more—
As they disappear from our eyes holding one another in theirs.