When We Two Parted
By George Gordon Byron

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow–
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me–
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well–
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met–
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?–
With silence and tears.

In a letter to a friend in 1809, Byron wrote (probably facetiously) that he was going to Turkey to do research for a treatise “Sodomy simplified or Paederasty proved to be praiseworthy from ancient authors and modern practice”. Like all jokes, this must have had an edge of truth to be funny.

At Cambridge, Byron had fallen deeply in love with a choirboy, John Edelston. Byron wrote several poems that scholars believe were written to and about John, calling him “Thyrza”. One of the Thyrza poems, written after John had died, indicates in the words: “The pressure of the thrilling hand, the kiss, so guiltless and refined, that Love each warmer wish forbore”, that their physical contact had been restricted to hand-holding and kissing. He later referred to it as a passion “violent though pure”. Even much later in life, after the “Thyrza” poems had become very famous and popular, Byron refused to say who they were addressed to and changed the pronouns from masculine to feminine to conceal that this doomed but lifelong passion was for a man.

After two years of being Byron’s “almost constant associate since October 1805”, John had to move away from Cambridge to London and Byron wrote to a woman friend, Elizabeth Pigot, about his heartbreak, saying that he was planning to live with his “protégé” after he had completed his studies, which would “put Lady E. Butler & Miss Ponsonby to the Blush, Pylades & Orestes out of countenance, & want nothing but a Catastrophe like Nisus and Euryalus, to give Johnathon & David the ‘go by’ “. These are all same-sex passionate relationships.

However, some time later John wrote a very courteous and formal letter to Byron asking for his help in getting a job. They had never met again.

While Byron was on his travels in Turkey, Albania, and Greece he wrote to Matthews frequently about his sexual conquests of boys using a coded term based on Latin “plen. et optabil. –Coit.” (Frequent and desired intercourse). He reported that he was amusing himself with “a Sopha to tumble upon” with a Greek boy called Eustathius who had “ambrosial curls hanging down his amiable back”.

It has been argued (with very little evidence)that while in the East, Byron was a lover of Ali Pasha or his son, Veli Pasha, rulers of Albania and the Peloponessus. They were very friendly and hospitable to Byron and Veli Pasha did give him a beautiful white horse.

Byron’s relationships with friends of both sexes seem to have been shadowed by jealousy and possessiveness. John Cam Hobhouse considered himself to be Byron’s “best friend” and in many ways was, travelling with him, assisting him legally and financially and finally burying him. There is no trace of sexuality between them.

Byron and Shelley became very close friends in the summer of 1816 in Switzerland. They sailed around Lake Leman together visiting the locations of a romantic novel written by Rousseau called “La Nouvelle Heloise”. One afternoon they exchanged roses. This was rhapsodically memorialized by Shelley in his journal where he referred to Byron, anonymously, as “my companion”.

While he was visiting Byron in Venice several years later, Shelley was shocked by Byron’s ostentatiously erotic lifestyle and remarked in a letter to a friend in England that some of his street pick-ups had “lost the gait and physiognomy of men”. This has been interpreted to mean they were cross-dressers. Shelley was also outraged that Byron bargained with parents for the services of their daughters.

The last poems Byron wrote were found among his papers after his sudden death. They indicated that he had fallen painfully and guiltily in love with a fifteen year old Greek boy named Loukas Chalandritsanos. Byron gave him money, fancy uniforms and the command of a regiment. As far as is known there was no physical contact between them.

Byron is known to have had sex with at least 300 women.

So the verdict is bisexual, although such distinctions were not explicit at the time. I think “hyper-sexual” covers it.

I’m heading back to Alabama and I guess back in the closet for a while. It’s been a good vacation, but it’s time to go back and face reality.

“We Two Boys Together Clinging”
By Walt Whitman

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 chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

Walt Whitman’s poem “We Two Boys Together Clinging” is often identified as a poem of homosexual love, a label breeched from its title and the history of its author. Other scholars insist the poem represents a unique concept of the brotherhood of two young men, forged by the experiences of war. In either interpretation, the poem paints a portrait of masculinity through its setting of soldiering during the Civil War (1861–1865). Whitman’s poetry, including “We Two Boys Together Clinging”, was written before the “unspoken love” of homosexuality had a name to be spoken of. The context of the poem recalls the camaraderie of men through the challenges and ruggedness of this American war. Enveloping the romance of soldiering, the lines of the poem easily echo the ancient wars of the Romans as much as modern and contemporary wars through which notions of pride, glory, and masculinity are still associated. Whitman’s portrayal of this intense companionship developed from “excursions making” and “sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening …” often leaves the reader with notions of survival, learned (or inherited) skill, manipulating the enemy, strength of body and intelligence, and the pursuit of adventure—all aspects society traditionally perceive as masculine.

In “We Two Boys Together Clinging,” a duo of young boys goes parading through various towns of the North and the South, taking part in numerous loud and obnoxious activities such as drinking, thieving, and enjoying public power; all the time, the boys never left each other’s side. According to Charles M. Oliver in his Critical Companion to Walt Whitman, with the last line, the speaker reveals that the two boys are homosexual and that they have been marauding places for food and to see the shocked faces of the people when they recognize their homosexuality.

Normally, Whitman would write about the “self” or the “everyman,” but it’s unlikely that either of these are strongly involved in “We Two Boys Together Clinging.” The story itself is not really self-enhancing because the speaker does not refer to anything that sets up a sense of fulfillment. The boys merely travel from location to location, scrounging for food and laughs, but they do not lead full lives. In fact, their lives are hallow and lacking, and they should be, at least, trying to build a solid relationship with each other to base their adventures less on necessity and more on friendship. The “everyman,” however, is slightly prevalent in the people the boys visit, like the priests, because religion was a large basis for the lives of the common citizen.

The Indications [excerpt]
Walt Whitman, 1819 – 1892

The words of the true poems give you more than poems,
They give you to form for yourself, poems, religions, politics,
war, peace, behavior, histories, essays, romances, and everything else,
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes,
They do not seek beauty—they are sought,
Forever touching them, or close upon them, follows beauty, longing,
fain, love-sick.

They prepare for death—yet are they not the finish, but rather the outset,
They bring none to his or her terminus, or to be content and full;
Whom they take, they take into space, to behold the birth of stars,
to learn one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faith—to sweep through the ceaseless rings,
and never be quiet again.

To be honest there is not a whole lot I want to add for explanation or comment to this poem. This poem is what poetry means to me. I hope it speaks to you in the same way. I dearly love poetry and the above “indications” are why I love it so.

Garnishes
By Micah Mora

Most peculiar –
The air is warm today
Shadowing my outsides
And blanketing my soul
Bare to the eye
My insecurity finds me
Binds me
Steals my breaths
As I count to ten
And see there’s more to me hiding
Blow me fresh
And wisp away the delicacies
Running fingertips on mountain hills
And garnish each single strand
Most prolific in memory
Till at last
Like air
Thus wind
So befitting
Set me free

Micah Mora is a model, dancer, and above all an artists. The picture above and below are of him, such a beautiful young man and a tremendous gay artist. I happened across this poem on his Twitter (@MicahMora) and wanted to share it because I found it quite beautiful.

Free verse poetry can sometimes be difficult to comprehend, but I think the beauty of this piece speaks for itself. I think we all have insecurities, and in a way, this is what I’ve talked about the last two days. We have to “count to ten” and let go of those insecurities and be proud of who we are and continue on so the wind can set us free.

“I have a belief that romanticism is what keeps our hearts young and our minds free to wonder.” – Micah Mora

Love in the Morning
By Annie Finch

Morning’s a new bird
stirring against me
out of a quiet nest,
coming to flight—

quick-changing,
slow-nodding,
breath-filling body,

life-holding,
waiting,
clean as clear water,

warmth-given,
fire-driven
kindling companion,

mystery and mountain,
dark-rooted,
earth-anchored.

About This Poem

“‘Love in the Morning’ was written in a spirit of sensual gratitude. The poem unites the four elements to celebrate male sexuality.”
—Annie Finch

Annie Finch is the author of Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2013). She teaches online in the Poetcraft Circles and lives in Portland, Maine.

Antique
Arthur Rimbaud, 1854 – 1891

Graceful son of Pan! Around your forehead crowned
with small flowers and berries, your eyes, precious
spheres, are moving. Spotted with brownish wine lees,
your cheeks grow hollow. Your fangs are gleaming.
Your chest is like a lyre, jingling sounds circulate between your
blond arms. Your heart beats in that belly where the double
sex sleeps. Walk at night, gently moving that thigh,
that second thigh and that left leg.

Verge
By Mark Doty

A month at least before the bloom
and already five bare-limbed cherries
by the highway ringed in a haze
of incipient fire
—middle of the afternoon,
a faint pink-bronze glow. Some things
wear their becoming:
the night we walked,
nearly strangers, from a fevered party
to the corner where you’d left your motorcycle,
afraid some rough wind might knock it to the curb,
you stood on the other side
of the upright machine, other side
of what would be us, and tilted your head
toward me over the wet leather seat
while you strapped your helmet on,
engineer boots firm on the black pavement.

Did we guess we’d taken the party’s fire with us,
somewhere behind us that dim apartment
cooling around its core like a stone?
Can you know, when you’re not even a bud
but a possibility poised at some brink?

Of course we couldn’t see ourselves,
though love’s the template and rehearsal
of all being, something coming to happen
where nothing was…
But just now
I thought of a troubled corona of new color,
visible echo, and wondered if anyone
driving in the departing gust and spatter
on Seventh Avenue might have seen
the cloud breathed out around us
as if we were a pair
of—could it be?—soon-to-flower trees.

About This Poem

“Often we don’t seem to know when something new—maybe something major—is beginning. ‘Falling in love’ is, in truth, a recognition of something that’s already happened; when you know you’re in love, you’ve already arrived there. But can you ever tell when you’re just on the brink of something exhilarating, disruptive, lovely?”
—Mark Doty

I think Doty hits the nail on the head. You never know when you are on the brink of something, whether it is exhilarating, disruptive, or lovely. Sometimes it takes time to realize where a relationship is going; sometimes you might know from the beginning; and other times the journey can be incredibly confusing.

About Mark Doty

Author of several volumes of poetry and two major memoirs, Mark Doty, winner of the National Book Award for poetry, is one of the most celebrated American poets to emerge from the 1980s and 1990s. Doty helped bring the AIDS narrative and the experiences of gay men to a wider audience through emotionally resonant stories, a richly stylized poetic voice, and poems characterized by brilliant language and a polished surface. His work universalizes themes of loss, mortality, and renewal.

Doty writes poems of sumptuous detail and imagery while at the same time embracing emotionally raw subjects such as mortality and loss. His poems also explore art, beauty, and beauty’s surface, as well as the flaw, the wound, and the limit.

Doty is among the most prominent gay poets of his generation, and he has earned distinction as an AIDS memoirist. He has also managed to transcend the category “gay poet” and to find a wide audience and commercial success. As Robert Martin suggests, if Doty’s work endures, it will be in part “because he has understood the need both to record the suffering of AIDS and the desire for human gestures to transcend all loss and to write in a form at once delicate and powerful.”