Naturally, the preference is for
victory, not persistence
which, like fire if not put out,
in time will burn itself out.

Mere watching is not, of course,
particularly victory, but it need not,
either, signify perversion.
One tends increasingly to think

on one’s first flasher in the park,
that first uncircumsized, ungainly
cock—how, as when some trick is
near, not to watch was the impossible

thing, waiting for what the pulled
bandanna, what the dove might next
turn into—and to feel guilty, as
if Lucretius had never written of joy