In Memoriam Thom Gunn
He doesn't look at you
as if you were some strange
animal alien to his kind, a grotesque
appendage dangling
or bobbing between your legs.
He is not repelled by your hairiness
or the hard
angularity of muscle, cartilage, bone.
He is not afraid
of your brusque touch
or frightened by the size of your
body.
He does not nurse the hidden rage
of an offended child,
nor does he accuse you of rape,
or attempted rape,
or fantasies of rape.
He welcomes you as a fellow creature
who shares his needs and his ways.
He knows you as he knows his brother.
He trusts your trust and your good
faith.
This is the ground of your love for each
other.
_______________________________________________
Top image from www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/feminist_art_base/archive/images/732.2265.jpg
Bottom image from http://sporeflections.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/two_men_hugging_gay_art_paintings_male_nude_naked.jpg
2 comments:
Without Beauty Is No Beast is a very well writen poem. How about the title changing to Without Beauty There Is No Beast. Mmmmm
The title imitates one of the "Proverbs of Hell" by the 19th-century English Romantic poet, William Blake ("Without Contraries is no Progression."). I kept the form of the proverb in order to create an ambiguity: it could mean that if we don't place some people in the category of Beauty (sweet and lovely female), then we won't place others in the category of Beast (sinister and unlovely male). Or it could mean that no beast (male) is lacking in beauty. I think that both ideas are true and valuable.
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