David Howard: BLACK
    for Cecile


Like the air you are clear and slightly damp
before this black man.

The glider of your desire falls only to soar.
His body is an emergency landing-field.

When he strips it is to the waist, no
lower. His shoulders spin sweat: it

slips with his hand
below. Your eye times that hand.

He pours water but washes with blood
and his body is the colour blood leaves on cloth

after it has been washed. Blushing
like a noonday pippin, you know

he will be the codling-moth in your hollow:
a waste of wild air..

*

Although they hold dust in common
air is not interested in those who used to breathe.

His body is astonished, contrite. He lives
in the dust, but his lungs are filled with light.

In all weathers he sleeps under the stars  -
even when there are no stars. You can't lie

back and admire his view: everything surrounds
everything else. Do what you want to do.

Even when he is not looking he sees you.
Those eyes are the shadows of clouds over stones.

The hour is near - to what you are not sure.
He can tense his pectorals in a dozen languages

whereas your voice falls into the endless
river which is night and has as its tributary day.

*

You're only saying that to get at me.
No, he's only saying this to get to you.

With which letter of your Christian name will you
invade his pagan body? I.

Stone still he shows nothing but he is
a sentient statue intent on outstaring

passers-by like you. If you stare at anything it
disappears. A mythological figure

vanishes into the abyss: men end in the earth.
This nonentity with symptoms

twitches like the skin around a rabbit's nose.
What ever did you see in one another?

- But at dusk you must gather mulberries
darker, harder than this black man's balls.

*

When lovers were borders to jump
he had the poise of a black tulip on a still morning.

The leaf that is only a leaf is a leaf;
the man who is only a man is not a man.

As noon as dusk comes on the tulip deepens
in colour. Because it accepts everything

black is angelic. You inherit his movements
as an owl inherits the dark it sees through..

Yes, the last touch of the artist's brush was his cock.
Even the light is embarrassed, fumbling

down your front. His torso forever
isolated from its limbs, this cock was

a messenger suspended
between two worlds: 'if' and 'only'.