The Lovers
We are the lovers.
You have seen us before. Perhaps together,
Perhaps apart – to us it hardly matters now.
In our heyday we sampled every imaginable
Combination of partner, position and scene,
And learned thereby every type of pain:
The anguish of plenitude and emptiness,
The endless savageries back and forth
Of role reversal and jealousy and masks,
Changing places but changing nothing, for
In the morning everything was the same again.
Now we can’t even remember each other’s names
Or the circumstances when we met,
With comic hairstyles, perhaps, and togas
Or a penchant for lark’s vomit and sodomy.
Oh, the shapes we made, writhing in the orgy!
Of course, when circumstances required
We could be discreet, and met in secret
As a pair of shepherd lads or the insatiable
Anchorite with her father-confessor.
That was in the dark ages, among whose crooked huts
Our passion regularly inflamed the old men’s impotence
To such a degree that they incited pig-faced locals
To drive us out with pitch forks and vegetables.
Yet I still think my favourite game was the classical one
When one of us spotted the other bathing or hunting
And took a sudden vengeful yen. Then
We’d chase each other into the shades of the wood
To consummate our passion by the agonies of metamorphosis
Into an echo or a flower or a stag – for this defines us:
Always chasing, always changing. It is how you’ll find us
In the public galleries and the margins of your history.
Look closer. Wait a while until we move. There now:
Are you sure we are not watching you?
