A vision together
By August Kleinzahler Copyright 1999 by August Kleinzahler
Watching Young Couples with an Old Girlfriend On Sunday Morning – How mild these young men seem to me nowwith their baggy shorts and clouds of musk, as if younger brothers of the women they escort in tight black leather, bangs and tattoos, cute little toughies, so Louise Brooks annealed in MTV, headed off for huevos rancheros and the Sunday Times at some chic, crowded dive. I don’t recall it at all this way, do you ? How sweetly complected and confident they look, their faces unclouded by the rages and abandoned, tearful couplings of the night before, the drunkenness, beast savor and remorse. Or do I recoil from their youthfulness and health? Oh, not recoil, just fail to see ourselves. And yet, this tenderness between us that remains was mortared first with something dark, something feral, we still refuse, we still refuse to name.