PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

You have a well-trimmed beard; he lacks any facial hair.

Your body is not athletic; his is slender, lithe and agile.

Your have entered your forty-fifth year; his is his nineteenth.

You are a Poet; he shall soon become your Muse:

you are bookish; his knowledge of stars exceeds any classroom's.

Despite old prudes' prejudice and haters' insults,

being dismissive are as equally dismissible;

your new Muse has opened the deep storehouse of your soul.

You have read, before the Emperor, your elegy

to the deceased and lamented Antinous;

and all the courtiers present appreciate

the poem (though Emperor's grief is obvious).

But Hadrian issues an imperial decree

confirming your young lover's manumission from chattel slavery;

which, though still astounded hours later, you and he---

now guests at the imperial villa, celebrate

with a night of most intensely pleasurable intimacy,

which is not accused of, nor labeled, perversity;

but rather, because of committed monogamy,

has been sanctified by Love to the abundant full.

J-Called