Thy voice, as tender as the light
That shivers low at eve -
Thy hair, where myriad flashes bright
Do in and outward weave -
Thy charms in their diversity
Half frighten and astonish me.

Thine eyes, that hold a mirth subdued
Like deep pools scattering fire -
Mine dare not meet them in their mood,
For fear of my desire,
Lest thou that secret do descry
Which evermore I must deny.

Hard is the world that does not give
To every love a place;
Hard is the power that bids us live
A life bereft of grace -
Hard, hard to lose thy figure, dear,
My star and my religion here!

Text: To a Friend, James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)
Image: photographer, sitters, unknown,
Daguerreotype circa 1850, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Have no shame, you’re mine for good;

We share a sole insurgent fire,

We live in boundless brotherhood.

I do not fear the gibes of men;

One being split in two we dwell,

The kernel of a double nut

Embedded in a single shell.

Text: Imitation of the Arabic, by Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, 1835
Translation: Michael Green
Image: Photographer, sitters, unknown; via deak/ipernity

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,

That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, its age old pain,

Its ancient tale of being apart or together.

As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,

Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.

You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.

At the heart of time, love of one for another.

We have played along side millions of lovers,

Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,

the distressful tears of farewell,

Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you

The love of all man’s days both past and forever:

Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.

The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -

And the songs of every poet past and forever.

You have returned. You have returned, my joy:

you have returned as polar morning comes

after a whole night winter. Throb the drums,

– yes beat my blood to greet my darling boy.

My heart with wild delight shall now employ

both tongue and pen to reckon up the sums

of all my gladness. Pleasure almost numbs

my reason. I am shaken like a toy.

Like sunlight after a storm, like flowers from ice,

yes, like a torch lit in oblivion

you have returned, and heaven bursts above.

No music mad enough shall suffice.

My heart shall paean like a clarion.

I am the bugle for the mouth of love.

Text: #19,  from Carmina Amico (1932), by Edwards James
Image: photographer, subjects, unknown 

i love this boy, not for his beauty only,

but just because my life that was so lonely

knows in his presence some strange healing power,

an unfamiliar peace — as if each hour

should pause a little in its swift-winged flight

and breathe a benediction. in his bright

blue eyes his happy spirit sits and smiles,

and never evil dreams, or wanton wiles,

or lusts o’ercloud their sweet serenity:

i dare not hope — but, when he looks at me,

something half-shy, half-trusting, leaps therein

and shadows of dead passion and old sin

all dreadful haunting memories, take flight –

you think i’m happy? well — perhaps you’re right!

image: photographer, subjects unknown
text: excerpt, ‘the beautiful,’ by f.s. woodley, (1888-1957)

You are a murderer
No you are not, but really a wrestler
Either way it’s just the same
For from the ring of your entangled body
Clean as leather, lustful as a lily
Will nail me down
On your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendons
The thoughtful forehead
(In fact, it’s thinking nothing)
When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelids
Inside, a dark forest awakens
A forest of red parrots
Seven almonds and grape leaves
At the end of the forest a vine
Covers the house where two boys
Lie in each others arms: I’m one of them, you the other
In the house, melancholy and terrible anxiety
Outside the keyhole, a sunset
Dyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter Escamillo
Scorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirst
Falling, falling, a gymnast
If you’re going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler



 

Image: unknown
Text: Sleeping Wrestler by Mutsuo Takahashi
from Poems of a Penisist, 1975, translated by Hiroaki Sato

Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountains yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair lined slippers for the cold
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs,
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

They shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning.
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

Text: The Passionate Shepherd to His Love,
Christopher Marlowe, published 1599
Image: Photographer, subjects unknown

on this day
when there’s no holiness
in all this madness of tests
where the heart is
with the sharpest brass knife
let us carve a tiny star
on each other’s chest
watch them light up
bright red
we will bless them with our lips
drink life
neither a seven-year itch
nor death
can split

text: assotto saint, offertory on a seventh anniversary
image: photographer, sitters, unkown, via scumbeast/ipernity

If time holds a miracle
we’ll dance together
as two old men:
sunstroke scalps
dropped buttocks, watery thighs.
But our hands
how our bony, veiny, trembling hands
will find their partners
palm to palm, fingers rung round each other
and hold on tight
tight.
Dance me
dance me across the floor
I’ll stay with you
if time holds a miracle.

Text: Miracle, Bil Wright, 1991
Image: photographer, subjects, unknown; 1930s,
via ipernity/scumbeast

Now when I am near to you, dear friend,
Passing out of myself, being delivered –
Through those eyes and lips and hands, so loved, so ardently loved,

I am become free;
In the sound of your voice I dwell
As in a world defended from evil.

When I am accounted by the world to be — all that I leave behind;
It is nothing to me any longer.
Like one who leaves a house with all its mouldy old furniture and pitches
        his camp under heaven’s blue,
        So I take up my abode in your presence –

I find my deliverance in you.

Text: Edward Carpenter, When I am near you, Towards Democracy, 1905
Image: Sitters, photographer unknown