A Lean and Hungry Look
"Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous."
—spoken by Caesar in Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
They say I think too much,
but if that fellow won’t look back, or can’t
(his training being much as mine once was),
who’s left to correspond? — To correspond:
to be the same or opposite,
the perfect match.
That was what we wished for way back when.
Today the images collide,
their colors break out from forms and make
my spectral skies of ecstasy, which is to say
the ones collected in my mind can’t bed with just any you,
and yet they formulate a new extreme where passion
occupies a fractal universe, wholly mine.
The ones I’d love are gone; their children’s
children serve me in the market, bring coffee
to my table when I ask and pay. They leave at night
for rooms I never see. What makes them,
all together in my mind, more than what their fathers were?
Is this the route all follow, or was it meant
as mine? Here ambition takes the face of care,
repeats where I have been. The beach defines itself.
There I find the hands imagination holds
in my wizened mind. I’m old.
And so I would be ready, John.
No expectations,
yet my good will holds me back. I must
depend on pictures. Let’s
sit beside salt water, gesticulate.
I like the one displayed beside us.
He’s thinking he’s the first to feel
the way he does.
He hasn’t seen the other soldiers yet;
he doesn’t know that he’s alone. I’m wanting
just his features as a memory before he’s
in the trenches, before he loses life.
Touching in the mind is worthier than life.
My inner village is a set of images, perfections.
My gaze is self-produced. Fashion made
him wear that tight white bathing suit, not
knowing what I’d see in him. He’s my display
and comes for free.
His limbs, resilient, submit to sleep.
I have so much. Privacy is nothing to
the mind. He cannot hesitate unless
I want him to. He will never understand.
He will never see.
He’ll never run from this bare room
that I define, in which my wizard self
can work its will traducing lineaments
to make that body feel less worthy
and, now humbled, look the way it should.
The old men gather on the boardwalk
as if a dream of wife were all there were,
some lady lost in games played long ago,
but here beside the water all is new.
The beach defines itself.
Ecstatic isolation is the only fact
my ending will allow.
"Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous."
—spoken by Caesar in Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
They say I think too much,
but if that fellow won’t look back, or can’t
(his training being much as mine once was),
who’s left to correspond? — To correspond:
to be the same or opposite,
the perfect match.
That was what we wished for way back when.
Today the images collide,
their colors break out from forms and make
my spectral skies of ecstasy, which is to say
the ones collected in my mind can’t bed with just any you,
and yet they formulate a new extreme where passion
occupies a fractal universe, wholly mine.
The ones I’d love are gone; their children’s
children serve me in the market, bring coffee
to my table when I ask and pay. They leave at night
for rooms I never see. What makes them,
all together in my mind, more than what their fathers were?
Is this the route all follow, or was it meant
as mine? Here ambition takes the face of care,
repeats where I have been. The beach defines itself.
There I find the hands imagination holds
in my wizened mind. I’m old.
And so I would be ready, John.
No expectations,
yet my good will holds me back. I must
depend on pictures. Let’s
sit beside salt water, gesticulate.
I like the one displayed beside us.
He’s thinking he’s the first to feel
the way he does.
He hasn’t seen the other soldiers yet;
he doesn’t know that he’s alone. I’m wanting
just his features as a memory before he’s
in the trenches, before he loses life.
Touching in the mind is worthier than life.
My inner village is a set of images, perfections.
My gaze is self-produced. Fashion made
him wear that tight white bathing suit, not
knowing what I’d see in him. He’s my display
and comes for free.
His limbs, resilient, submit to sleep.
I have so much. Privacy is nothing to
the mind. He cannot hesitate unless
I want him to. He will never understand.
He will never see.
He’ll never run from this bare room
that I define, in which my wizard self
can work its will traducing lineaments
to make that body feel less worthy
and, now humbled, look the way it should.
The old men gather on the boardwalk
as if a dream of wife were all there were,
some lady lost in games played long ago,
but here beside the water all is new.
The beach defines itself.
Ecstatic isolation is the only fact
my ending will allow.