i
Eros,
you are a child no more:
you have grown ripe for mouths to taste,
tongued tender neck to shoulder line,
breast taut and sloping down where firm
yet yielding to a poet's fingers
what dragons beneath the belly
in longing flesh awakening!
I set my eyes upon you now
in your statue-perfect moment—
ah, winged-foot kouros, do not move!
Beneath your sandaled tread the earth
indents and hardens, hungry clay.
You swim the sea, delight the waves
foam-white with arm- and legstrokes bold;
when you turn back, the ebbing tide
tugs out and downward, desperate
like a disappointed lover.
Sea beasts thrust up green tentacles,
amazed at your beauty, craving
the hoarded air in your ribcage.
Your vanished body, diving, mocks me.
You cannot drown! The gods have much
to utter through your vocal chords!
A lifeguard zephyr transports you
above, beyond the crashing surf.
Eyes closed, you ride on mist and cloud,
immobile as marble, your hair
a boreal banner of gold
across the blind, astonished sky.
You do not see the eyes that watch you,,
do not acknowledge worshippers;
your youth an uncrossable chasm.
I hesitate to speak, my hand
in greeting grasps you too lightly.
You flee the seven-hilled city.
I watch from a bench on the summit
as you hurtle down Angell Street.
Long I linger, long I watch for you
as you turn down the twisted lanes.
But you are always departing—
your future is too much my past.
You are too beautiful to touch,
almost too beautiful to live
in our tawdry and tarnished world,
unbearable Phoebus, a searing star!
2
Philia,
more rare than lust, more lasting,
desiring all and yet beyond desire;
the unseen walker-beside of dreamers,
first ear to my poems fresh from the pen.
You are the comforter of solitudes,
the perfect thou in silent communion.
For you the bread is baked, the teapot full,
the door unlocked, the sleeping place secure.
If you came for a day, or forever,
it is the same to me—what's mine is yours.
I swear I shall not pass a day with you
unless it be filled with astonishing things.
At night, the room you sleep in breathes with me,
the darkness between us webbed with moonlight,
cicadas heralding my dreamless sleep.
Scarce half a dozen times I've met you now,
soul mate and artist and fellow outsider.
How many leagues we two together walked,
how many ancient stones deciphered! Worlds
turned within us as we riddled science;
with thought alone we toppled cathedrals,
lived in all ages and nations at once,
counted as friends the poets and sages.
(These the mingled streams, the parting rivers,
the memories that are always with me,
friendship true in a world without honor,
with brothers who choose us, and whom we choose.)
3
Agape,
rarest and last of all the affections,
you come at the end as solace to the spirit,
friend of all who cannot trade in beauty's coinage,
the vestal hope of love outliving the body.
It matters not if him you love returns your gaze.
It matters not if he chose his death by drowning,
or if his brain burned mad, or he wasted away,
or if he squandered his genius to mate and die—
it matters not to love's eidolon, in whose eye
all types of love are stippled in a deep gravure.
You are the bird-sleep stillness preceding the dawn,
the astonished hush that follows the thunderclap:
you are lord of all benevolent silences.
At the unvisited cell of hag and hermit
your threads drop down like gilded spider webs,
a boon and blessing from the ever-burning stars.
For those who dare translate your enigmatic verse,
tribe, shade and totem, time and sorrow, slip away
as all who strive become ensoul'd in one great heart.
This is the love the gods and philosophers knew—
divine yet having nothing to do with heaven—
human, yet far beyond the lusts of animals—
at alchemy's heart, the Midas wand of autumn
turning temporal green into immortal gold.
4
Always my loves are three-faced,
triptych in unity.
Approached, they hesitate
to give their names.
One name is not enough.
Lust was too quickly slaked
to hold them long, the vows
of hollow fellowship too soon betrayed.
No one suspected the aspirant god
in their bones, defying weight,
yearning toward the zenith.
And you, my momentary captive,
caught in my weave of words,
am I to be your lover,
brother,
fellow spirit?
Is my yearning for hair and bones?
For hearth and soul mate?
For winged companion to Olympus?
I do not know,
cannot define
my troubled and troubling affections.
And as for you,
Adonis, Atys, Adonai,
who knows what you mean
by being beautiful?
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