“Let us sing the praises of great men! Let us make eulogies for the epics!
To Augustus, and to Caesar, we come bearing love!”

So dripped the phrases from my too-thin lips
When singing speeches from pulpit profane
Swathed in a mantle so carefully made
By washer-women in the grime outside,
And the ghouls dancing before bear-baiters -
Brides sneaking for snatching Men from their homes.

And peripheral, ephemeral, I
Caught the first glance
Of the last strand
Of a gold wisp.

Sapsucker and Warbler, nameless and true
It was all too easy to adore you.
A speck of dust in a vast pupil could
Make you one of the fair, I did not dare
Ignore the seizings and the hot weepings
That wrought their holy terror on my heart.

Amidst the dust on the vanity planks,
And the water slick and sliding the boards,
Beneath the great expanse of sky we saw
The sweep of Birnham Wood and Elsinore,
And they made you their lily girl.

Made up in pale faces behind the Stage,
Hiding from stumbling stone and laughing pews
Your hairless chin tapered with curls, which wound
Around your lily neck and bob and a
Slight slip of fabric curving ‘bout your bits.

G’on ‘n’ play lovers for the paying folk –
They jeered and they whooped like a heaving cough.

Your bent nose made it a misnomer but
We paid no mind - The writer said your lips
Made it excusable.

I excuse them!
I forgive you beauty, though it was on
The far side of boyishness. No apologies,
No mousy words to a most wicked man.
You forgave me my callousness – my savage
Fingerbones and bulging, all agéd cheeks.
Tossed a charity, like some a shilling
Into a withered hand, by accepting.

By God, Leave a light on in your window;
I will seep inside your walls; they are thin.
And you will wear no clothes of foreign queens.
I will give no sonatas, no elegies.
Vowels sleep beneath my lips defeated.
I am not your writer; I don’t demand
A performance.
But can you see these hands?
They don’t applaud so loudly, yet they sing
Their approval in a small man’s measures.

Fingers threading dispense with alibis -
When in youth I heard quavers in your cords
But you grew old. Bless you. So now I pray.

We were too talented: with roles like robes,
Against the snicker-snack of curtain's close.

M’boy, m’lad, him of with’ring eyes and cool stare
The art of love is more love and less art
When played off the stage.

Oh, remember our giddy poverty?
Now, each clang of pennies into our palms
Makes us rent-boys in an epic brothel
Which engages its boys to dress and preen.

But steady now you roughness at my core,
The marble behind gives us a venue
And a farewell for your adolescence

Cruel statue, pitiless and wretched thing!
That time would not stop for you; you deserved it.
We are not better men but beggar men
And we sing for the supper of Vitus
And his approval in our great crowd.
Soon we’ll see the charade close, illusion
Dissipate. But we are idealists, chuck;
We swear piety to the part that we played
And I will go on and bury my staff.

Dear heart, dear boy, let us now take our leave
Of our pulses, no more lovers, no more
Pantomime.
It once surged in our blood – we will be clean.