My husband lies in bed, breathless
Not with excitement but wondering
From where the next breath will arise
To quell his mortal fear.
Thinking of him, I recall a poem he loves:
Where dreaming stands for Whitman's need
To believe in lawless love 'tween boys.
Boys who will be men pose momently
To model men who still desire to
Be boys, who as they cling to
Each others bodies,feel manlike power
In the flexing of their limbs, being
Armed wirh weapons of tremendous power.
Boys mock laws like urban cow-pokes
In fantasy of the Wild West and shock
Befrocked priests, because they feel
Empowered by that enacting of the dear
Love of comrades.
But they need
Beware chasing 'feebleness' in its regal
Momentum through our bodies. Let's not scorn
Our frailties and vulnerabilities
For bodies come to this at times
Amd wish for strength and the breath
It takes to sing.
So on they cling.
And hope for strength that bears us through
Those dark nights and pallid days of ill.
With all my love and all my human frailties matching those that he suffers in his body now, my sweet husband, Geoff. Here is the Whitman poem with detail from Hockney’s tribute:
WE two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions
making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on
the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chas-
ing,
Fulfilling our foray.
With love, but especially to Geoff
Steven, his clinging husband xxxxxxx
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