Were Sade and Sacher-Masoch Jacobins
For nothing? Shoulder to shoulder, on the shelf,
Justine and The Furred Venus bare their sins.
One smashed the Other, the other one, the Self,
Yet both were enemies of bondage, when
That bondage was not self-imposed. Below
This row of moralists, now and again
We took our sad and learnèd pleasures, though
The usual feudal screwing might have bored
Sade, whom tight bands of passion bound to his victim
Or Masoch (when he’d made his lady lord)
Whose will wielded the thorns with which she pricked him.
Egalitarian enough for two,
Sometimes, love, I’ll insist on what we’ll do.
Charlus, chained to his bed at Jupien’s-
No man, we’re told, has ever been more free.
I don’t know how this paradox extends:
My magnet hand, sliding above your knee
Toward a far stronger core, is not unwilling;
Its claim to bondage is my poor excuse.
And giving up the ghost, that sudden spilling
Is welcome death in mutual abuse.
Perhaps submission, that a height be gained
Is just like credo ut intelligam,
A language game, played indoors when it rained,
Until I won it, with my finger, thumb
And one free hand, trembling with love and fear
Of what determined me, yet felt so near.
To come together, bang! on the first night
We loved would leave us little more to learn
Or hope for. But if it’s you I help ignite,
When in your bed, away from you I burn.
Hope is what feeds that heat, hope that next time
Two moments of becoming flame will draw
Closer together, echoed (or in rhyme,
At least deferring to S. de Beauvoir’s law
That your explosion’s too unique to mean
What mine does). It’s a peculiar kind of race
When coming in first adds up to a clean
Loss; so I’ll let you have a moment’s grace
Now, with my hand, before the final run
Whose bang’s prefigured in the starting gun.
I thought of turning you into a boy
So that my queer friends, too, might feel the quick
Of my longing when they read this, and the joy
Of my having. But it’s much too hard a trick
Just as it is, to keep you breathing fast
Moving beneath me on this bed of paper.
My lady is too volatile to last;
How can I risk her substance to reshape her?
Yes, that means you, sweet. I can feel you twist
Against me still and freeze in a brief cry,
My true deep secret that does not exist:
Why should I break you out into a lie?
No. Ed and Fred and Ted and Ike and Mike
Will just have to imagine what it’s like.
A sweet girl who was much too tight a fit
Taught me that being patient can be death
On making love. She just took hold of it,
Finally; we lay there, until rapid breath
Subsided. There was no point any more
To being there, bare to the autumn chill
While the pale sun crept back across the floor
And left us clinging to a distant hill
Atop the darkened bed, rather than in it.
There was no need for patience then; we stared
Up at the ceiling for what seemed a minute
Till the night came, and we were unprepared
For the soft lights outside, tears unafraid
To fall, and hopes that always fail to fade.
Remembered nights, and a few afternoons
Are all of you that I’ll have left to keep
Someday, like scraps of half-forgotten tunes,
Making a feverish disease of sleep.
One morning you bent down to touch your toes:
A band of body peeped out of your jeans.
That strip of you expands, and overflows
Its bit of vision, filling other scenes:
Once after lunch we took to bed; our faces
Blurred as we still lay there in the dying light.
A taxi dropped us off at different places;
The smell of you was on my hand all night:
Each time I drained my glass, a part of you
Emptied my memory, and no one knew.
A picture of you in the golden age
Of seven in a summer by the sea
Shines from the midnight of this album-page
We hold together on your parted knee,
With braids and swayback stance and cheap sarcasm,
Newly learned, and a great solemnity
Just once, in profile. I, a pale phantasm,
Underexposed, lurk in futurity;
But in the adjacent bathhouse, through a hole
Bored in the wall, my surrogate observes,
With no great joy, your tiny crack, the sole
Treasure your body’s guardianship serves:
Scratched knees, taut belly and audacious bum,
Your tiny keyhole guards the gate to come.
There’s more, dear, to this kind of paradox:
We know how supple Epimetheus
With his stiff key, unlocked Pandora’s box
And pushed inside, past all the fret and fuss
Toward fluttering wings of hope: she shut him up
Thereby, and fled into a world of girls,
Giggles and curiosities. His cup
Was empty, but undrained. Just so, these curls
Around your keyhole, tiny, soft and flat
Whisper together as I stroke them now,
Plot my imprisonment-once I’m in, that’s that:
I’m jailed and jilted, and your binding vow
Of liberty is snapped, here on this bed.
We screw because there’s nothing to be said.
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