Secret Thots for a Very Private Gentleman
tales, temptation, and titillation…
I am on my back
—waiting to be spread wide apart—
waiting for you to die with the sense of you
—the pleasure of you—
the sensuousness of you touching the sensuousness of me
—all my body—
all of me is waiting for you to touch
the center of me with the center of you.
—Georgia O’Keefe—
Go to the limits of your longing…
Flare up like flame and make big shadows that I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.
— Rainer Maria Rilke —
She always had that about her, that look of otherness,
of eyes that see things much too far,
and of thoughts that wander off the edge of the world.
— Joanne Harris —
When you place me in the position you most want me in…
In the position I want to be in…
We can share no deeper pleasure than this.
1.
Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you; before long I die:
I have travelled a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you:
For I could not die till I once looked on you,
For I feared I might afterward lose you.2.
Now we have met, we have looked, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love—we are not so much separated;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse—yet cannot carry us diverse for ever;
Be not impatient—a little space—know you, I salute the air, the ocean,
and the land,
Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.— Walt Whitman —
(enchanted by this strange proximity)
Longing, and mystery, and delight…
as if from the swaying blackness
of some slow-motion masquerade
onto the dim bridge you came.And night flowed, and silent there floated
into its satin streams
that black mask’s wolf-like profile
and those tender lips of yours.And under the chestnuts, along the canal
you passed, luring me askance.
What did my heart discern in you,
how did you move me so?In your momentary tenderness,
or in the changing contour of your shoulders,
did I experience a dim sketch
of other — irrevocable — encounters?Perhaps romantic pity
led you to understand
what had set trembling that arrow
now piercing through my verse?I know nothing. Strangely
the verse vibrates, and in it, an arrow…
Perhaps you, still nameless, were
the genuine, the awaited one?But sorrow not yet quite cried out
perturbed our starry hour.
Into the night returned the double fissure
of your eyes, eyes not yet illumed.For long? For ever? Far off
I wander, and strain to hear
the movement of the stars above our encounter
and what if you are to be my fate…Longing, and mystery, and delight,
and like a distant supplication…
My heart must travel on.
But if you are to be my fate…— Vladimir Nabokov —
translated by Olga Voronina
you became a ghost.
“What does it take to inspire you?”
He asked.
“I need to fall in love,” she replied.
“Surely there must be an easier way,”
he retorted.
“Why, I have already fallen in love twice today,” she answered,
“First, when I set my eyes upon the
ever precipitous mountains that surround us,
guarding us like the skin that stretches along our bones,
and second,
with the uncertainty in your voice when you asked
if there is anything easier than falling in love.”
— n. o. —
