Remember, Body
Body, remember not just how much you were loved,
not just the beds where you have lain,
but also those longings that so openly
glistened for you in the eyes,
and trembled in the voice—and some
chance obstacle arose and thwarted them.
Now that it’s all finally in the past
it almost seems as if you gave yourself to
those longings, too—remember how
they glistened, in the eyes that looked at you;
how they trembled in the voice, for you; remember, body.
[1916; 1917/1918]
Days of 1903
I never found them, ever again—all so quickly lost …
the poetic eyes, the pallid
face. … in the gloaming of the street. …
I’ve not found them since—things I came to have completely by chance,
things that I let go so easily;
and afterwards, in anguish, wanted back.
The poetic eyes, the pale face,
those lips, I haven’t found them since.
[1909; 1917]
The Afternoon Sun
This room, how well I know it.
Now it’s being rented out, with the one next door,
for commercial offices. The entire house has now become
offices for middlemen, and businessmen, and Companies.
Ah, this room, how familiar it is.
Near the door, here, was the sofa,
and in front of it a Turkish rug;
Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
On the right—no, opposite, a dresser with a mirror.
In the middle, the table where he’d write;
and the three big wicker chairs.
Near the window was the bed
where we made love so many times.
They must be somewhere still, poor things.
Near the window was the bed:
the afternoon sun came halfway up.
… At four o’clock in the afternoon, we’d parted
for one week only … Alas,
that week became an eternity.
[1918; 1919]
To Stay
One in the morning it must have been,
or half past one.
In a corner of that dive;
in back of the wooden partition.
Apart from the two of us, the place completely empty.
A kerosene lamp barely shed some light.
The vigilant servant was sleeping by the door.
No one would have seen us. But
we were so on fire for each other
that caution was beyond us anyway.
Our clothes were half undone—we weren’t wearing much,
since it was blazing hot, a heavenly July.
Delight in flesh amidst
clothes half undone:
quick baring of flesh—the image of it
has crossed twenty-six years; and now has come
to stay here in this poetry.
[1918; 1919]
Of the Jews (50 A.D.)
Painter and poet, runner and thrower,
Endymion’s beauty: Ianthes, son of Antonius.
From a family close to the Synagogue.
“The days that I most value are the ones
when I abandon the aesthetic quest,
when I forsake the beauty and rigor of the Hellenic,
with its overriding preoccupation
with perfectly formed and perishable white limbs.
And I become what I would like
always to remain: of the Jews, of the holy Jews, the son.”
A bit too heated, this declaration of his. “Always
remain of the Jews, of the holy Jews—”
But he didn’t remain one at all.
the Hedonism and Art of Alexandria
made the boy into their devotee.
[1912; <1919?]
Imenus
“… it should be loved all the more,
the pleasure that’s attained unwholesomely and in corruption;
only rarely finding the body that feels things as it wants to—
the
