You are someone with a penchant for dark
beers and pasts, walk-in closets and porch-step

smokes, who liked to ride it out to the depths 
of the middle of Lake Hopatcong, spark

the flint of your lighter, take longing drags
and talk about hipster coffee and sex

with whipped cream designs—and sometimes, your next
lover—and dive in to put out the fag,

swim to the deck to peel off your cotton
boxers and wring them in your fighter’s fist.

It’s too cold in the fall on the water
we fall in, too naked for falling in

naked and docking unanchored like this.
I remember. You’d kiss me and shiver.

You're jealous if I kiss this girl and that.
You think I should be constant to one mouth.
Little you know of my too quenchless drouth.
My sister, I keep faith with love, not lovers.

Life laid a flaming finger on my heart,
Gave me an electric golden thread,
Pointed to a pile of beads and said:
Link me one more perfect than the rest.

Love's the thread, my sister, you a bead,
An ivory one, you are so delicate.
These first burned ash-grey—far too passionate.
Farther on the colors mount and sing.

When the last bead's painted with the last design
And slipped upon the thread, I'll tie it so,
Then smiling quietly, I'll turn and go
While vain Life boasts her latest ornament.

Watch my Love in sleep:
Is she not beautiful
As a young flower at night
Weary and glad with dew?

Pale curved body
That I have kissed too much,
Warm with slumber's flush;
Breasts like mounded snow,
Too small for children's mouths;
Lips a red spring bud
My love will bring to bloom.

How restlessly she moves!
She, no more than a child,
Stirs like a woman troubled
With guilt of secret sins.

Twin furtive tears
Glide from the shadows,
Her eyes' shadowed blue.
Her dreaming must be sad.

What grief to watching love
That it is impotent,
For all its reckless strength,
When the sleep gates close.

Because I am a boy, the untouchability of beauty
is my subject already, the book of statues
open in my lap, the middle of October, leaves
foiling the wet ground
in soft copper. “A statue
must be beautiful
from all sides,” Cellini wrote in 1558.
When I close the book,
the bodies touch. In the west,
they are tying a boy to a fence and leaving him to die,
his face unrecognizable behind a mask
of blood. His body, icon
of loss, growing meaningful
against his will.