Vern Barnet TFN75

(Gloria) TROPARION: INCIDENTS

75. New York Stile

     Nisus et Euryalus primi,/ Euryalus forma insignis
     viridique iuventa,/ Nisus amore pio pueri.

      Look down, you gods,
      And on this couple drop a blessed crown!

     “Love him,” said Jacques, with vehemence, “love him
      and let him love you. Do you think anything else
      under heaven really matters?”

     So the seen couple’s togetherness shall bear
     Truth to the beauty each in the other sought.


Now tight. So turn the subway (touch!) ride very
public, private-like. You tally arm
around him, hung. He flairs; you both are merry
passengers tracked and torqued. You splash your charm.
I’d seen your matched greed, waiting for the train,
your tabs and furtive brush in interlude
between your bodies whole engorged in pain,
starvation’s pleasure in arriving food.
     Beyond erotic, you enlist luxe spells:
     I glimpse them as your fluids chase and hide
     within each other’s swollen streams and wells;
     I spy them in ablutions as we ride.
Bless you, cadets, and all who Christ sets free.
Splash each pious passage as you’ve splashed me.

The first EPIGRAPH is from The Aeneid, 5:294-6, “First appears Nisus and Euryalus: Euryalus conspicuously handsome and flourishing youth, Nisus distinguished by pious love for him.” Byron paraphrased their story in his “The Episode of Nisus and Euryalus” in his 1807 Hours of Idleness. E2: from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, 5, 1. E3: from James Baldwin’s 1956/2001 Giovanni’s Room, p62. E4: from Fernando Pessoa, 35 Sonnets, 1918, XIX. An ablution is a religious ritual cleansing, usually with water. Eyes: “Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is — / Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his / To the Father through the features of men’s faces.” —Gerard Manley Hopkins, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” with paronomasias I, aye, eye. >«Nineteen». Free: “For the yoke of their burden . . . you have broken” —Isaiah 9:4. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” —Galatians 5:1. Δ Pronounce line 1 through the turnstile.

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