The Stellar Other
I sometimes meet the lost at night
and stepping over Cerberus's chain,
you were returned to me
I took your hand and held it to my face
I saw you through our fingers
your eyes always the colour of the
scholar's dissertation
their darkest blue reserve
once more mine to remember.
And from the first I saw the muses
all attendant at your birth
Fortune had bitten you and left her kisses
ringed around your neck
her favourite son, you were her gift
to all who never knew her.
And
if you had
been raised by erring wolves
no one would have ever known
to look at you
you errant Adonaïs,
your perfect clay proclaimed you from afar
while the smoke rings took your fox-like laugh
into the blacklight.
And if your
mother never heard you
and your father never saw what they had made
forever deaf and blind may they remain.
They threw an alpha, ne plus ultra
and to me
your gifts
all seven wonders
and I knew you were my people
born with stars upon your knees,
and even from your height
you would go down on them for me.
You heard with one, but smiled with both
our harmony a whole
wordless and perfect
as the moon
ilargia,
todas las estrellas
y la luna.
You gave Strange Fruit to me,
her voice, and not its portent
and in your bed your body
spoke the language of its blessed shape
I felt the word poured forth amid the dark miles that I passed
all broad and full-blown
driven deep against the slow roll of your hips
your hand a sweet guest and my private whore
Enkidu, incandescent
milk-white, midnight
shameless and unlettered
you loved like you had never seen the sun
but had been made to show me stars
and as I lay under your shoulders
your wordless mouth could mute the bard.
You graceful
bright and crownless Solomon
I should have made your bread and washed your feet.
It is a bitter thing
to know
our children left
before we could explain ourselves
there are no prayers
for small things
lost
to ribbon red.
And I
did not agree to lose you
to relinquish you to chemistry
that Nemesis was never anything to me,
but followed you
until you fell into that falling sickness
so unlike Caesar's malaise
already crawled behind your aegis,
your silver stolen,
darkness knotted round your arm
your hand lost to a fist
and when your blue
went down behind your lids
no Orpheus could sing you to the light
your left, that double bind
your ruined side had found you.
Sometimes
there is something to be said
for Nothing
but we already knew
there's no Elysium.
When we go down with stars upon our knees
it is to nothing
and it drives the hardest bargain.
Nothing
could give no more offence to your creators
than to offer you in pieces
to return you to the Garden,
with a smile, wreathed in laurel.
And to
whoever may have found what you had left
my sincere regret,
my deepest sympathies.
To have laid you low
and drawn the black around veinte dos veranos,
twenty-two summers
your bones not even grown
more gifts than you would ever know laid out in shallow silver
and when they weighed your heart Asclepius would weep
beside the stones.
Some days
your loss is something fatal in itself
caught in my throat
to breathe or move will be to join you.
That is what it is to lie with Nothing
you took me down and widowed me
and left me on the ground
to burn my eyes out in your ashes.
The stars upon your knees are on my own
and I
have always worn them as you wished.
Inside me you have lain so undiminished
Fortune finished with you
perfect clay forgotten
and I
would trade her bitter, graceless favour
for another day
to lash the muses, change your name and
feed the years to Cerberus,
that punishment they all deserve.
I found that I could play when you had gone
and now my heroes wear your colours,
delight their lovers with your smile.
Never dream
that no one lights a flame for you
no sun sets on a day
without my hands upon your face
upon my life, you are still loved
always the scholar's dissertation
and my songs will wear the lustre
of your endless constellation.
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