WHERE ARE THEY GONE?

WHERE ARE THEY GONE?
THE FROLICKING
AND THE LAUGHTER?

A shining thread runs through my life
And at a touch it crumbles and is gone;
But followed back along its tenuous length,
I find a deep and hidden level,
Humble in its strength, and LO, a diamond
Thing called love steps boldly out
Upon the bows of light and dances
Down the stairs of winds.

It has a powerful virility,
The beauty of male bonding,
Greater, more steadfast, more urgent
Than the Yin and Yang;
A Damon and Pythias thing, Adonis spurning Venus,
The sad, sad beauty of Narcissus by his spring.

The Greeks knew it, and the Romans to a lesser degree,
Jesus, perhaps, endowed it with a godly purity.
And certainly Alexander gave it a power in the land.

And now, one night lover, stroll with me
Through shouting silences in this vast and empty room,
In a house long shut and shuttered
And hoared with age. Step gingerly pray,
Avoid trampling my myriad, spent selves
Scattered willy-nilly about the dusty floor.
These shadow shapes are me,
Suckled and fed and drained
By other shadow husks of dead lovers,
Themselves dust motes in the pale winter beams
Sifting through grimed windows.

Come, take my phantom hand,
I'll lead you through this great
Crowded (did I say empty?) room, to the graceful,
Crumbling stairs up which I bounded in my youth
To the endless bedrooms and trysting places
With bold, beautiful lovers, themselves long
Since scattered dust to dust.

I can feel the coarse urgency
Of their frantic, seeking mouths,
The dark stubbles of five o'clock shadows
Roughing my own cheek
As they force their faces into mine,
Symbolizing the fierce need to be inside,
To bury themselves in the object of their need,
The furnace of their need.

How easy, then, to swoop from mountain tops,
Like eagles spurning earth, sure and secure
In the bonded strength of my sweet young men,
Knowing that if I leaped from peaks
And trod with blind faith the unsupporting winds,
They would be there, a thousand strong,
To bear me up in their bold, young arms
And randy as cleft mountain goats,
Leap from crag to crag and spear my openings
And bathe me in the fluids of their youth.

And as they grew and named themselves mature,
And walked with a more steady stride,
They banked their fires and held their loins in check
And I cried for my sweet exuberant boys,
My wild, passionate young randy boys.

And then - and then I left the mountain tops,
And trod the piedmont regions,
And LO, I discovered that banked fires
Hold a much hotter and steadier heat,
That maturity has something which youth lacks,
Depth and security and a paced love
That, when called upon to do so,
Can roil the waters of passion fathoms deeper
Than the surface splashings of youth.

And now, other young lovers,
If perhaps upon some lonely midnight,
My lusty and lusting young men
Find their way into your lonesome bed,
Perhaps, just for a moment, through them,
I'll reach out and touch your secret places
And make a pallet for you in my heart.
George Martin

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The above poem is dedicated to my lord and Master, Colin, My Prince of stars