winged conga lines parading
         the buzz of homo love songs

where boy scouts gather in a tool shack,
jacking off to the sounds of Perry Como

This is for Alicia, shaking back dark hair,
dancing one-breasted with the Sabbath bride.

Here, the water plunges below the cliff-face.
Here, the locomotive purrs in the station.

What does it look like
now? A man, a woman , a roadside diner.

What more is there to know? We speak
in tongues. We live nowhere near the water.

Although stone nudes are everywhere—some crammed
two to a column, supple caryatids,
and others mooning in the Tuileries—

In the dun-colored sky
A cloud even more dun-colored
With the black outline of the sun.

Ah, to be old and rage uncontrollably,
to command the sun and moon to stop
and yet be treated like a dog,

In Bible Class I stared at a colored print
Of Michelangelo's The Last Judgment.
I looked at the swirling bodies drawn up