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Two sleepers at night lying close together as they sleep,
one with an arm slanting down across and below
the waist of the other,
The smell of apples, aromas from crushed sage-plant,
mint, birch-bark,
The boy's longings, the glow and pressure as he confides
to me what he was dreaming,
The dead leaf whirling its spiral whirl, and falling still
and content to the ground,
The no-formed stings that sights, people, objects, sting
me with,
The hubbed sting of myself, stinging me as much as it
ever can any one,
The sensitive, orbic, underlapped brothers, that only
privileged feelers may be intimate where they
are,
The curious roamer, the hand, roaming all over the
body—the bashful withdrawing of flesh where
the fingers soothingly pause and edge themselves,
The limpid liquid within the young man,
The vexed corrosion, so pensive and so painful,
The torment—the irritable tide that will not be at
rest,
The like of the same I feel—the like of the same in
others,
The young woman that flushes and flushes, and the
young man that flushes and flushes,
The young man that wakes, deep at night, the hot
hand seeking to repress what would master him
—the strange half-welcome pangs, visions, sweats,
The pulse pounding through palms and trembling
encircling fingers—the young man all colored,
red, ashamed, angry;