Each one of which with undivided will
And married purpose we may make our own.
Nay, rise: stand with me at the cavern door:
The storms are over and the skies are clear,
Trembling with dew and moonlight and still stars.
Heaven hears us and the palpitating air,
The woods that murmur, and the streams that leap
Regenerate with tempest-scattered tears;
Be these our temple and our witnesses,
Our idol, altar, oracle, and priest,
Our hymeneal chaunt and holy rite: —
What better need we? and before we die,
All Crete shall bless the marriage of tonight.’
OSCAR WILDE
from Charmides
Down the steep rock with hurried feet and fast
Clomb the brave lad, and reached the cave of Pan,
And heard the goat-foot snoring as he passed,
And leapt upon a grassy knoll and ran
Like a young fawn unto an olive wood
Which in a shady valley by the well-built city stood;
And sought a little stream, which well he knew,
For oftentimes with boyish careless shout
The green and crested grebe he would pursue,
Or snare in woven net the silver trout,
And down amid the startled reeds he lay
Panting in breathless sweet affright, and waited for the day.
On the green bank he lay, and let one hand
Dip in the cool dark eddies listlessly,
And soon the breath of morning came and fanned
His hot flushed cheeks, or lifted wantonly
The tangled curls from off his forehead, while
He on the running water gazed with strange and secret smile.
And soon the shepherd in rough woollen cloak
With his long crook undid the wattled cotes,
And from the stack a thin blue wreath of smoke
Curled through the air across the ripening oats,
And on the hill the yellow house-dog bayed
As through the crisp and rustling fern the heavy cattle strayed.
And when the light-foot mower went afield
Across the meadows laced with threaded dew,
And the sheep bleated on the misty weald,
And from its nest the waking corncrake flew,
Some woodmen saw him lying by the stream
And marvelled much that any lad so beautiful could seem,
Nor deemed him born of mortals, and one said,
‘It is young Hylas, that false runaway
Who with a Naiad now would make his bed
Forgetting Herakles,’ but others, ‘Nay,
It is Narcissus, his own paramour,
Those are the fond and crimson lips no woman can allure.’
And when they nearer came a third one cried,
‘It is young Dionysos who has hid
His spear and fawnskin by the river side
Weary of hunting with the Bassarid,
And wise indeed were we away to fly:
They live not long who on the gods immortal come to spy.’
[145-186]
FRANCIS KING
Holiday
Two beds, one stripped and one on which I lie.
Hearing the rush of wind, the rasp of rain,
And hither, thither, one small fretful fly,
And high above my head that darkening stain.
The stain spreads out and out. This storm will last
All through the night. The frenzied water slaps
The marble quay, from which no boat is cast.
Mist makes the mountain crumble and collapse.
Below, four figures huddle round a table,
The boatman ponders, then flings down his cards,
As though in some remote, Illyrian fable
A god-man scatters divinatory shards.
What does he read from them? A queasy tossing
Of wave on wave on wave, a thread tugged tight,
Then snapping, as the small boat braves the crossing
Out of this dark into a blaze of light?
The boatman smiles, while in my room above
A vision flickers of those spilled cards lying
Beneath a brutal hand; and all my love
Becomes a long-drawn agony of dying.
ROGER FINCH
The Rape of Ganymede
By eagles eye, the pubescence on the boy
is visible as short gold wires. Zeus behind the eye
sees millions of cells, each cell
containing a yolk of energy.
Just as the aggie is about to shoot
from the forefinger fold in front of the boy’s thumb,
scattering reds, blues, and greens out of the ring,
the gate of Heaven rattles its gongs
and Zeus descends the sky on a staircase of wings.
The boy is startled. His playmate, a cousin, runs.
Later, the cousin will tell that the sea
fell from the sky, the black waves on fire
from core to snow-cap, the hammering
against the air like the hammering of hands
against the heart. He does not understand love,
does not know why his friend did not thrust the flood
away but stood dancing in it, a god
taking place in him as the sky danced in his blood.
His words will serve as sketch for workers in stone.
One will show a teenage boy at play
with an eagle, one will show the bird
lifting the boy, lifting its quarry.
Stone cannot hold such motion. Only sound,
the rumblings in the lower strings, the troughs and crests
in the clarinets, the flutes high, high overhead,
can portray the pair whirling out loud
as they bypass the cousin, arms and wings spread.
GREGORY WOODS
‘A goatboy pissing . . .’
A goatboy pissing
between roots, sweet vapour
of urine and pine,
turns to me grinning
still pissing, barefoot
in heat of wet needles,
back to his careless herd.
By way of introduction
we gossip soccer
and he goes on and on
naming English teams
as I go down on him.
II STREET LIFE
______________________
These are poems which, even if not literally of the streets, nevertheless belong in identifiably urban contexts. Despite the attractions of even a shepherdless rural existence, gay culture has always tended to colonize city spaces and gay poets to claim and name their chosen places. These are usually very specific: Venice (Platen-Hallermünde), Alexandria (Cavafy), Edinburgh (Owen), Rome (Penna), Glasgow (Morgan), San Francisco (Gunn), New York (Ash) and of course London (Stevenson, Treby, Daniels, Kinloch, Johnson). Within the cities, several of these poems record incidents and encounters on buses or trains: to be on the move, it seems, is our natural and necessary state.
There are various implied continuities here, and I’ve also included two poems — by William Plomer and James Kirkup — which are explicitly meant as homages to C.P. Cavafy and Sandro Penna, whose poems immediately precede them. At the end are two recent poems from Toronto and New York, by R.M. Vaughan and Lawrence Schimel, which offer rather different perspectives on urban gay life: one ruefully funny, the other whimsically domestic.
AUGUST GRAF VON PLATEN-HALLERMÜNDE
Translated by Edwin Morgan
Venetian Sonnets: XII
I love you, as the sum of all those forms
Which Venice in its paintings shows to us.
The very heart may yearn, ‘Come close to us!’
But they stand silent, we pass by their charms.
I see you are the breathing stone whose
arms
Hold beauty carved for ever motionless.
Pygmalion’s rage is still. Victorious
I cannot be, but yours, yours through all storms.
You are a child of Venice, you live here
And stay here; this place is your paradise,
With all Bellini’s angels flocking near.
But I — as I glide on, I recognise
I am cheated of a world so great and so dear;
Like the dreams of darkness it dissolves and flies.
WALT WHITMAN
from Calamus
City of orgies, walks and joys,
City whom that I have lived and sung in your midst
will one day make you illustrious,
Not the pageants of you, not your shifting tableaus,
your spectacles, repay me,
Not the interminable rows of your houses, nor the ships
at the wharves,
Nor the processions in the streets, nor the bright windows
with goods in them,
Nor to converse with learn’d persons, or bear my share
in the soiree or feast;
Not those, but as I pass O Manhattan, your frequent
and swift flash of eyes offering me love,
Offering response to my own — these repay me,
Lovers, continual lovers, only repay me.
JOHN GAMBRIL NICHOLSON
Your City Cousins
As I go down the street
A hundred boys a day I meet,
And gazing from my window high
I like to watch them passing by.
I like the boy that earns his bread;
The boy that holds the horse’s head,
The boy that tidies up the bar,
The boy that hawks the Globe and Star.
Smart-looking lads are in my line;
The lad that gives my boots a shine,
The lad that works the lift below,
The lad that’s lettered GPO.
I like the boy of business air
That guards the loaded van with care,
Or cycles through the city crowd,
Or adds the ledger up aloud.
I like the boy that’s fond of play;
The office-boy cracks jokes all day,
The barber’s prentice makes me laugh,
The bookstall-boy gives back my chaff.
When travelling home by tram or train
I meet a hundred boys again,
Behind them on the ’bus I ride
Or pace the platform by their side.
And though I never see you there
All boys your name and nature share,
And almost every day I make
Some new acquaintance for your sake.
C.P. CAVAFY
Translated by John Mavrogordato
The Next Table
He must be hardly twenty-two. And yet
I’m sure that nearly as many years ago
That was the very body I enjoyed.
It isn’t a kindling of desire at all.
I only came into the casino a minute ago;
I haven’t even had time to drink much.
That very same body I have enjoyed.
If I don’t remember where — one thing forgotten doesn’t signify.
There, now that he has sat down at the next table,
I know every movement he makes — and under his clothes
Naked I can see again the limbs I loved.
WILLIAM PLOMER
A Casual Encounter
In memory of Cavafy, 1863-1933
They met, as most these days do,
among streets, not under leaves; at night;
by what is called chance, some think
predestined; in a capital city, latish;
instantly understanding, without words,
without furtiveness, without guilt,
each had been, without calculation, singled out.
Wherever it was they had met,
without introduction, before drifting this way,
beneath lamps hung high, casting
cones of radiance, hazed with pale dust,
a dry pollenous mist that made
each warm surface seem suede, the sense of touch
sang like a harp; the two were alone.
To be private in public added oddness,
out of doors in a city with millions
still awake, with the heard obbligato
of traffic, that resolute drone,
islanding both, their destination
the shadow they stood in. The place
should perhaps be defined.
But need it? Cliff walls of warehouses;
no thoroughfare; at the end a hurrying
river, dragonish; steel gates locked;
emptiness. Whatever they said
was said gently, was not written down,
not recorded. Neither had need
even to know the other one’s name.
Nor do you need to know any more
of an hour so far off, so far,
it may be, from what turns you on.
They, with peacefulest smiles at a rare
Befriedigung, parted, breathing the gold-
dusted, denatured air like the pure
air of some alp: nor met ever again.
Is that all? To you it may seem
a commonplace episode. Once was a man
who might not have thought so. To him
(an old photograph hides his neck clamped
in a high stiff white collar, on his pale face
a false-looking moustache) let me dedicate
this moth-winged encounter, to Cavafy himself.
WILFRED OWEN
Six o’clock in Princes Street
In twos and threes, they have not far to roam,
Crowds that thread eastward, gay of eyes;
Those seek no further than their quiet home,
Wives, walking westward, slow and wise.
Neither should I go fooling over clouds,
Following gleams unsafe, untrue,
And tiring after beauty through star-crowds,
Dared I go side by side with you;
Or be you in the gutter where you stand,
Pale rain-flawed phantom of the place,
With news of all the nations in your hand,
And all their sorrows in your face.
SANDRO PENNA
Translated by Blake Robinson
‘I lose myself...’
I lose myself on a working-class block,
so very busy when evening is near.
For I'm among men quite distant from me,
marvellous men to my eye: radiant,
clear, not known quantities at all.
All the same and unknown and new.
I take the seat, that’s in a dark corner,
a worker cedes to me. He chases
after (just making it) a bus in flight.
I didn’t see his face, but now
I have his quick-limbed way in my heart.
Left me in that dark corner is what
I took from life — from him, an unknown —
his honest animal smell, like mine.
JAMES KIRKUP
Homo in Omnibus
In memory of Sandro Penna
The rush hour in Naples
lasts all day long, and
most of the night.
In the crowded bus,
the summer suffocated.
I tried to sublimate my agony
by gazing on a boy’s delightful face
just out of reach, not out of mind —
that pure smile, those furry eyelashes!
While contemplating that amour de tête,
I gradually became aware
of a concern more close —
indeed, right behind me
an urgent male body pressing
with a policemans truncheon.
I dared not
look behind —
indeed I could not, my shoulders pinned —
but I could just insinuate my hand around
against the rough, worn cloth of someone’s
cheap cotton working trousers
with its pocketful of change.
Not small change, either,
but something beyond price. I, too,
found myself in a manly condition
(as Nabokov puts its somewhere).
To be the possessor of such riches
in such a humble purse!
At Mergellina, I had to push my way
off the bus — and I was glad to find
he still was pushing close behind me.
On the station escalators,
I finally dared look round — and you were there.
You might have been
anybody, so ordinary did you look.
But you were laughing as your hand outlined
what I was now quite familiar with.
A few words, a handclasp, an offered
cigarette (refused), an arm in mine —
so we prolonged that first encounter,
so dangerously public, in hallowed privacy,
all night together in the small hotel he knew
near Napoli Piazza Garibaldi Termini.
It was an eternal one-night stand,
a passing need, and none the worse for that.
Gay Love Poetry Page 4