XXVII.
Le-Pic.

60.
Liceat, Quod Tangere non est, Adspicere et misero præbere alimenta fuori!
Ovid, Metamorphosis, Liber Quartus I.

α
I think there never was a finer man.
Of all the beings human beings can
Be, he was one of those whose soul
Was equal to his body in the whole
Measurement of breadth in spirit. He was
A Lamp of honor, one luminous, which does
Not excuse his faults and ignorance;
But passion blinded any second glance.

He lived unconscious of my adulation:
My life and his crossed quickly through each station;
Had I the time (and world), I would have hung
About his neck with love and fiercely clung
As drowning men do, no regard to size,
Buying dearly their slipshod demise.

I pare forgiveness down to naked words
And beg for nothing but to mind the clock,
And leave opprobrium to pecking birds,
To flutter near their carrion in shock;
I've come to say unholy things, to chitter
Purposefully, heart and spirit bitter.
How far may one disrobe the image given
Until sheer naked limbs shiver in shame?
And flesh on flesh, albeit touching heaven,
Which tissues ripped and muscles riven
Lose the human form, and smirch its name?
My passion lies in what I may not have.
Unhappiness is rue without the salve
Of rhyme and song to take the splintered edge
From sharpest eyes and social dæmons' pledge.
Therefore I part with all of humankind,
And parse the happy, feel amid the blind;
I seal my past with burning acrimony
Letting Him be free—for matrimony.

And I, apart, knew only burning eyes
And distant glimpses of his arms & thighs
Infrequently close by when time was ripe
(To witness both his calyx and his stipe),
And dreamed from opiates sucked through this pipe.
As in a pipe dream I have filled his speech
With tender words, and only dreamt his reach
Across my bosom was to feel my heart
Race for his touch, and speed ΕΡΩΣ' dart:
My own fancy has supplied the chucks
Upon the chin, the chippings in the nooks,
The clasps of arms entwined, the gentle nuzzle;
My life and his are so distinctly separate
As visages in mirrors, disparite,
Anathema to my poor fancy's puzzle.
He might be armed in gorgets, gants and greaves:
For all the penetration he receives
From ministrations proffered by my will;
From most improper sallies without virtue.
Fierce breastworks guard his unattainable
Taintless body from me; and it cleaves
My senses, shivers my spirit, spits me through.
Gulu Meh - Gulu Meh I lack the fortitude to turn away,
Ignoring what my spirit keens to say.

Undaunted by these masculine lacunæ
I take delight in flouting nature's seeds,
And supplement my passion with my needs
To magnify this small enormity—
Whilst crawling crookback'd, adipose and puny—
Descanting on my own deformity.
Egon, Egon mine I warmly clept you.
Were your name Actæon or Ganymede,
No human male would hold my eye except you;
Dressed in cloutings of the trimmest bead,
From shrimp pink linens, yellowest cravats,
Deciduous embrasures, purest spats;
Waistcoats of the rainbows, beetle's wings,
Devolving buttons: snake and dragon rings.
A hidden neckcord, of the finest metal
Moth-thin, web-woven, flutters as a petal
On the bone between your firm pectorals
Fortunate to harbor by such bossed hills.
Your pocket book, flat leather rides anew
Each morning, with its Flemish tooling, red
Across your hip, as Spanish tiles spread
Curved and consonant to bodies' hem and hew,
And as I hold it, drive the thought of you
Directly through my hands, eyes, soul, and head.
Each move you make is my heart's pantograph,
Enlarging every motion epically;
Your features etch their acid photograph
Upon the table of my memory.

We live there hot as touching lovers may:
In fancy, eager, but not possibly.
As blue as his eyes are, I am forbid
To make a simile aloud; I rid
My throat of spoken simple ecstasy
And make its silence gnarled complexity

β
We live in parallels, cold friends by day.
Indeed, his words to me are double headed:
He cannot not speak without my dreaming of
A line in coded type, or falsely leaded,
Mouthing platitudes, orating love:
This, limited as language in one letter
A tongue which has one sound is better,
And easier the lust which bolts, to fetter.

Disjointed passion, arcs of tiny span,
No men are now permitted to love man.
That love which men express through opposites,
In admiration, camaraderie,
Bludbruderschaft, battalions in their pits,
Bosom friends, with tinctures of Esprit,
Even Græco-Roman wrestling fits
The mold of men on men & wit on wits.
But they do not address the tender bridge
Which arcs in aqueducts of fulsome span,
A web of motes, the placid anchorage
Where journeys end with men embracing Man.

I shake their hands, and quiver at the touch,
I occupy the chair their person warmed;
I gaze into their startled eyes too much
And form opinions no one else has formed,
And wonder who is lonely, who is harmed,
And who is burned and who by flames is charmed.

I wonder why I am alone in pining
Endlessly for what I may not own;
Are there no others who express this shining
Object as desire, which strong as bone
Supports my frame and keeps me on my course?
What is this freakish root, this swollen force
Which teazles, guides, inflicts and fallow dies
In oscillations, quick absurdities.

Æolian sight, swept by in sunlight's breeze;
Your words are pertinent, and ever cool,
Dispassionate and overlucent, smooth, and bellclear,
Uncognizant of sad galvanic sparks
Which drive your headlon passion
Whose desire is to turn
And eye to eye chin to chin, lip
To lips, blow Semele's fate through fury
Of a blended face,
A noble neck, each rosy inch applied
With pure, transparent sunlight
Such slavery to you is gladly borne:
Would Praxilities complain his stone
Was not as pliable as flesh and bone,
Abandoning his Hermes' cold acorn
To ply the body-hot marmoreal horn
Which serpentines above its basket break,
Who is the charmer, and which is the snake?