But I have not forgotten our delight.
— And to my surprise, the hotel’s name
was ‘Sayonara — a fitting one for a brief
encounter started between two stops.
EDWIN MORGAN
Christmas Eve
Loneliness of city Christmas Eves —
with real stars up there — clear — and stars
on poles and wires across the street, and streaming
cars all dark with parcels, home
to families and the lighted window trees —
I sat down in the bus beside him — white jeans,
black jerkin, slumped with head nodding
in sleep, face hidden by long black hair, hands
tattooed on the four fingers Aden 1967
and on the right hand five Christian crosses.
As the bus jerked, his hand fell on my knee,
stayed there, lay heavily and alive
with blue carvings from another world
and seemed to hold me like a claw,
unmoving. It moved. I rubbed my ear
to steal a glance at him, found him
stealing a glance at me. It was not
the jerking of the bus, it was a proposition.
He shook his hair back, and I saw his face
for the first time, unshaven, hardman, a warning
whether in Aden or Glasgow, but our eyes held
while that blue hand burned into my leg.
Half drunk, half sleeping — but half what, half what?
As his hand stirred again, my arm covered it
while the bus jolted round a corner.
‘Don’t ge’ aff tae ah ge’ aff.’ — But the conductor
was watching, came up and shook him, looked at me.
My ticket was up, I had to leave him sprawled there
with that hand that now seemed so defenceless
lying on the seat I had left. Half down the stair
I looked back. The last thing I saw was Aden
and five blue crosses for five dead friends.
It was only fifteen minutes out of life
but I feel as if I was lifted by a whirlwind
and thrown down on some desert rocks to die
of dangers as always far worse lost than run.
FRANCIS KING
The Address
I did not think that I would care
After that last shrugged-off caress
That I should still be here, he there,
The distance might be more or less
And more or less my brief despair,
When I was given that address.
I did not think that I would lie
Upon the grass where we had lain,
Willing upon the vacant eye
A face I would not see again —
A face beneath that foreign sky
Which now could only bring me pain.
I did not think that I would take
Train, bus and mule to find that spot,
Sealed in the hills beside a lake,
Where everything was green with rot;
But otherwise how could I break
That odd and unrelenting knot?
I did not think I’d care at all,
Being so tricked, but none the less
My body ached as from a fall.
Strange that the cause of my distress
Should be a thing so very small —
A false address, a false address.
THOM GUNN
San Francisco Streets
I’ve had my eye on you
For some time now.
You’re getting by it seems,
Not quite sure how.
But as you go along
You’re finding out
What different city streets
Are all about.
Peach country was your home.
When you went picking
You ended every day
With peach fuzz sticking
All over face and arms,
Intimate, gross,
Itching like family,
And far too close.
But when you came to town
And when you first
Hung out on Market Street
That was the worst:
Tough little group of boys
Outside Flagg’s Shoes.
You learned to keep your cash.
You got tattoos.
Then by degrees you rose
Like country cream —
Hustler to towel boy,
Bath house and steam;
Tried being kept a while —
But felt confined,
One brass bed driving you
Out of your mind.
Later on Castro Street
You got new work
Selling chic jewelry.
And as sales clerk
You have at last attained
To middle class.
(No one on Castro Street
Peddles his ass.)
You gaze out from the store.
Watching you watch
All the men strolling by
I think I catch
Half-veiled uncertainty
In your expression.
Good looks and great physiques
Pass in procession.
You’ve risen up this high —
How, you’re not sure.
Better remember what
Makes you secure.
Fuzz is still on the peach,
Peach on the stem.
Your looks looked after you.
Look after them.
QUENTIN STEVENSON
Hampstead Notebook:
The Boy with the Broken Arm
Chin raised
he breathes through closed eyelids
and the upper lip tightens
with the delicate old man tremors
of a face reaching for sun.
Canine clamped
to the nail on the index finger of his left hand
the arm trailing
while the other
in its losers cast
not one signature offered or asked for
a months shame in the white
beats time on his belly
to the music of whatever makes him smile.
Blue tattoo
which tonight he’ll need to wash off
clematis also blue.
He likes the angle of his crossed leg
the first chafing of sweat
the heat trapped in his crutch.
But now he would like without opening his eyes
to undress.
The man who has passed three times
and stopped once
will not go on waiting.
Well here I am.
But do not expect me to look at you.
I’m different.
And mad.
I spoil things.
Everything about me is wrong.
IVOR C. TREBY
Incident on the Central Line
you zipped up too fast when the train came in
reluctant to stop you left it too late
there under the arches at Lancaster Gate
the metal teeth bit through the foreskin
i stood and watched through the tubetrain door
as you your game with the other forsook
saw your whitening face and your stricken look
the bright line of blood on the floor
three nights later the dried stains bear
witness a moment you’ll not soon forget
i see your face when these drops were wet
and the smile that even then lingered there
PETER DANIELS
Liverpool St
Meeting without meaning to, crossing the marble floors
of the refurbished terminus, we celebrate with food, choosing
station pastries or cartons of burger-fries; and we talk
on the train, o
r sometimes we don’t; sometimes that matters,
for reasons of living together, making our way home.
Tonight on the five-forty-five, the couple sitting opposite
get working on separate crosswords, like in-trays of invoices,
till one anagram calls out for the full attention of two;
and silently they distribute all of the concatenations,
finding between them the unspoken words to balance the clues.
Catching up with each other halfway to where were going
any day is a likelihood, and an unexpected extra.
We meet in a station, or we coincide in the bathroom,
we cross and merge in parallels less than a pillow apart:
joined-up people, finding the world as wide as our bed.
JOHN ASH
Following a Man
I was following a man
with a handsome, intelligent face
(the cheekbones high, the nose straight, the lips
sufficiently full), and judging by the shape
of his neck (an unfailingly reliable
indicator in my experience) a lithe, athletic
figure; or, to be more exact, he and I were merely walking
in the same direction along Seventh Avenue,
having earlier stood side by side in the Old Chelsea Post Office:
the day was Friday, June 9th, the time late afternoon,
and after only two or three blocks,
each full of particular events and distractions
(such as dogs, clouds, paupers, hydrants, hairdressers),
I began to feel that I was almost in love with this man,
that, like a song, I would follow him anywhere ...
Something about the way he slicked back his hair
delighted me, and I admired his beautiful raincoat
which so enhanced the easy masculine grace
of his movements. I was concentrating hard,
trying to take in all these details without giving
any cause for embarrassment (either on my part
or his) when he swerved into a newspaper store
between 16th Street and 15th, and I could think of no
plausible excuse for following him into that meagre space
where, surely, our eyes would have been forced to meet,
and I would have blushed (he being protected by a light tan).
In all likelihood he is lost to me, as
he would have been had that door been
the door to an elevator in an apartment building
bigger than all the pyramids combined.
Even if he should prove to be my near-neighbour
I doubt that I will ever see him again,
since in New York there are always too many
neighbours to keep track of (you hear
their footsteps, their voices and their music,
but it is difficult to attach these attributes
to a particular person, in much the same way
that an archaeologist may uncover the fragments
of a mirror but will never know the face
that, day by day, was reflected there)
but it is not as if he were dead. He exists
and will continue to do so for some time, perhaps
for many years, and as I walked without hesitation
directly past the store he had entered I was overcome
with a sudden feeling of elation at the thought
that it was within my power to record this incident
which is unexceptional
as the budding of pear trees in their season,
unrepeatable as the first sight of a great city.
STEPHEN TAPSCOTT
The Queens
One queen squeals as the other retreats,
flings a drink after him overhand,
baptizing the bystanders, making a scene
the two apparently need to create:
some hissy diva-drama, obscure and public.
And I’m soaked. Even my socks (a last-minute gift
from M. at the airport, saying take care of
yourself meaning I can't say this,
I can hardly stand this) and suddenly
I’m standing in a bog. What am I
supposed to do? Do I squeal too? I
don’t owe them that. Do I laugh benignly,
as if this whole embarrassing business
were funny, were my idea of fun?
Do I smile knowingly (the Older Man,
wiser and gentler, in expensive shoes)?
Or suck in my belly and scowl (yes Daddy)?
Or stick out my belly and growl at some kid
(please Master) as if he were to blame for it?
None of these options feels like freedom, exactly.
The flannel-plaids and sleeveless vests
settle for a shrug, a side-long chuckle,
a manlier grip on their beer-bottles
... and the tide subsides. Two college sweatshirts
boogy in place, locating each other
by echo. I’m getting too old for this.
I know why M. needs it — the practice,
the disco, the visual flick of desire,
the shock of being wanted: because it is difficult
and possible; because a young gay man
needs to be given, over and over, permission
to need; because he is handsome and he feels
darkly that somehow this affects his life,
not yet that beauty like his is a gift
to console him for his youth. He is young
and will be hurt, and hurt others, in time.
— because having grown up in this culture
a man has passed the standard social rites
and needs to return, to do it right
the second round, to learn the rules of pleasure
and honesty, party-behaviour and sweet
repression, as a queer and decent man.
It’s a funny business, this sex thing,
so thorough and so incomplete. The queens
are dancing now, shirtless, rolling their waists,
and their solitude is terrifying. They enact
for us something more rooted than politics,
or privacy: that we are people, an ‘us’,
a community ... but of what? shared need? Can
such affection matter, if we offer it
beyond persons — to any hunky trick,
or to men collectively, or to some man,
lucky particular, who summarizes
for the moment what one seems to want
for the moment, for the empty weekend?
Is this display itself a kind of tie,
an icon of raw want? A community,
what is that? Do I mean a collection
of the brave and the needy, of whom
these feral dancing boys,
posing and turning in the hard music,
are our ambassadors, shamans, poets?
Maybe I’d explain it that way to some judge
who stood beyond the threshold of the subject.
[Note to myself, for future sonnet:
embarrassment', a form of jealousy;
implies the judgement of an uninvolved
third party; not shame; laughs-with? Develop.]
This scrimmage of allegiance and resistance,
I wonder how it differs from any other
citizenship a grown man chooses. These are
my people. We danced together into the camps.
And yet we embarrass me, and squeal,
and pour beer in my favourite socks. These years,
anyone can die of misjudged sex:
we know, we all
know. And know too a man can wear away
from solitude: no one is immune.
How can I be too proud to be here,
when I feel the same urgency
that moves th
em, dancing? Shocked by joy, to see
in the torque of that long boys waist the same
white turning as M. s, his torso, when he winds
a towel around himself, so pure it sears me.
The symmetry of it: we are one body and are
each apart. Though whether this lurching fugue
of sex and its pulses are the effect
or the fact of the loneliness, curse
or the first cure, whether this dancing
exposing their waists can make them happy
(as I am for the moment, liftingly happy),
who am I to say for them? I can say
we are a people, whatever that signifies
in language or in longing, or in belonging
exactly through this pulse and its common
motions, or through this saying, obliquely
for us all. The queens are lofting, angelic
now. The T-shirt with the kind moustache
has asked the skinny overalls to dance
(as he had hoped there shyly, glancing);
Big Daddy (even his cigar is leather) is buzzing
over the boy in the wire-rimmed glasses,
they sway as the sinuous music passes
through them, they are discussing
insect-images of sexuality in Proust... We
are one body; we lift and embarrass me —
and I’m grateful, I realize, may be
for that most of all -: we amuse me,
in the vast implausible surprise
of being here ... though its getting loud
in this blue cellar; its late; its packed; the crowd
is turning younger, and the hot smoke burns my eyes.
Gay Love Poetry Page 5