I saw it in a book on diseases of the mouth,
the smile that is heaven, the smile I cannot reach:
the youth known only by some gesture in the street
but held and loved in memory like honeyed plums
dripping through the slats back home—
the way the body does not want to separate from coitus
even though the love has died and failed us.
And so taking for a season these summer rooms,
we couched ourselves in the satin sheen of marble walks,
the tristesse of linen trousers, of peacocks
garnishing the lawns, while our friend
to make us see and feel the world stripped of its skin
described the paddocks where he sodomized his father’s grooms
among the smell of thoroughbreds and leather.