' ue ■ 'O ao C/Qa^ % all the lines of the body, all the long accelerating passages of energy reach towards the sex hanging in its triple ease. The hands are too large, enormously capable, but the body is not yet grown two itthh ethirecahpeaacditwy.hTichhe ystaarreesinolfef aingtuoeth e d istan ce seeing what must be done. Yet the message is the sex is the source of doing. At the museum too I watched the watchers. The young women lsooomk eedt hai nt gt h, et hDe aovliddear so inf et hs eays ci fo tuhl de yl ekanrenw s o m e t h i n g or longed for something, the men with a mingling of envy and pride. T h e morning after I saw the statue—sleepless, up early walking the streets—nothing open, no coffee, finally an espresso bar with a sleepy-eyed girl twu rhnei nn gt ht rheee ksemy. aI lnl sdi ad er k I I st at ol i ao nd sawt tahl keebdairn l o o k e d at my hulking Scandinavian frame, started to snigger, and I swear I heard Goliath among the nudges and winks. Iammuisdtdfle e-al gsedlf-mcoannscaimouosnagbaobuut sbleoiandg o f young Davids. They like me, though when I walk through the streets with one of their young women, I am their enemy, the one they must kill before they can come to their kingdoms. Ithink of another kind of masculine figure— a Poseidon or Zeus, as male and as naked as David, his arm raised to hurl a thunderbolt or trident, the statue in Athens, that attribute lTohstisnboowdiyn itshfeillAedroiautitc, .balanced, mature, muscles alive with living. The genitals aHreis tihsetrhee, beunteprgayrtoof faanfaucllceor mpalnis.hed, masculine .. .... .. me world ,rin_gouwtwitharhdis will. We live in an age where that energy is suspect. We suspect it in ourselves. Our women suspect it for us. Maybe they are not wrong. Yet why do I feel such loss? am supposed to meet some of my young friends by Romeo and Juliet’s balcony. Instead, I think I’ll have another with my comrades here. It is good to sit in the setting Italian sun waiting for women to walk by, drinking bittersweet Campari, thinking of David, thinking of how his body grew to his hands, how he became both poet and king. And how do we learn to do this, become our richest selves and yet not burn with the will’s corruption? There is, beyond, a fear— as a friend of ours once said, “Great Nature has another thing to do to you and me," so the body goes its way, still clinging to its old desires, carrying us with it. When David’s blood cooled about his kingly bones, they brought him Abishag—that young chick—to look at, and so I sit here with my friends watching the women walk by, my languid friend slipping deeper into melancholy, my angry one becoming more ferocious in the fading light.
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