endymion before your eyes

58. As They Awake Hang on to them, trembling poet, your dreams of erotic fulfilment, those hot and silky visions that haunt your imagination. Half More

58. As They Awake Hang on to them, trembling poet, your dreams of erotic fulfilment, those hot and silky visions that haunt your imagination. Half bury them in incantation; embalm them in your verses; they live between your lines and rhythms. Retain them, excited poet, as they awake again and stir whether at night or noon. 59. The Statue of Endymion It was a white chariot drawn by four white mules with jingling silver harness that brought us to Latmos from Miletos. Before that a proud imperial purple trireme carried me across the lapis sea from Alexandria. I have come here to enact the sacred secret rites of Endymion, with sacrifice and pouring out of wine. There's the statue of the transfigured youth, the shapely form and vision i adore. Slaves bring baskets jammed with fragrant jasmine. Our cries of supplication here revive the ancient cults and worship of the gods. 60. Grey The half-grey opal called to mind the memory of beautiful grey eyes seen twenty years ago. Our brief affair lasted for a month. He went away to Smyrna for a job. After that we never met again. The sparkle of his grey eyes, if he's still alive, will now be dulled; his handsome features grown heavy with age. But memory, memory where he lives again in youthful beauty, brings back love; night retains his image resurrected. 61. In a Frontier Town Beaten in a drunken brawl last night, our mate Remon was carried home. In the heat we laid him on the bed, windows wide open, bright moonlight streaming in across his half-naked body. We're all mongrels here, a rough racial mix: Syrians Greeks Armenians; so is our mate Remon. But lying there last night enhanced by moonlight he made me think of the athlete Charmides -- Charmides whose beauty sent a shiver of loving-lust through Socrates, the starving lion who sights the slim gazelle.
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