A novel is a floodlight
showing actors on a stage;
a poem is a spotlight
on one person in the audience.

Parents

You stupid boy, you silly girl,
to throw away the lives that hardly yet were yours
for some romantic notion of true love,
for nothing that could count as cause !

If you had lost your love when old
and only after true companionship lifelong,
then there'd be no-one else to take their place
and suicide would not seem wrong.

But you were young, all life ahead,
too young indeed to know lost love will heal in time
when young enough to find another love
and build a future in your prime.

So many years we nurtured you
through infancy and childhood till you reached this stage
of adolescence and how you repay
our love ! Now we can only rage

against your thoughtless foolishness.
Your names should be remembered so that none forget
the stupid silliness of teenage love.
Oh, Romeo! Oh, Juliet!