Francis Bennion - Poetry - Poemotions

When I saw you first, you with your Afro hair,
walking from the train station into my arms
- well into my new green sports car and later, perhaps,
into my arms -
I thought it wouldn't do
to show too much encouragement, and I saw that
you did too.

My dismay, slight, hesitant,
mirrored your own. That should have warned me:
we were communicating already.
'A deep suntan' you'd written to prepare me.
You didn't say (why should you?) how slight you were
that your Chinese ancestor had left you his hairless face.
That your white teeth let the light through.

You talked and talked, to keep away
what you had to have after the nineteen years
of living with dreams, shadows, exchanged glances, fleeting smiles.
No touch - untouched you were; as you explained
the slightest, softest touch would make you fly.
Often you did fly - after teasing your phantom lover to give chase.
But he never caught you - until now.

So for an hour, nearly two, side by side on the black settee, carefully not touching, we sat
while you boasted. Scornfully you dismissed the paintings on my wall.
Kindly, you dismissed me. I was not the blond
unreasonably you had expected. Chattily you told me
about Tadziu, whom you loved in silence,
adoring him like a god, worshipping his blond hair.
So subtle its tints: ash one minute, pink the next.

Start of page 264 in the book

Sometimes you ran out of things to say, and then you said
'I talk too much. I'm hopeless.' While coolly
I gazed at you, liking the clean blue denim holding your slender frame,
the thin gold chain round your smooth café-au-lait neck,
wondering if I should make a move or let it die
and, after a decent interval, trundle the corpse
back to the train station.

Your hands it was that trapped me: mobile; like my own;
smaller though, even more slender, the hands of a child.
Then softly, in mid-sentence, moving by themselves,
some of my fingers twined with some of yours.
You checked: mouth open, a sudden hiss of breath.
I smiled, as with love - and you smiled back,
our fingers continuing their embrace on our behalf.

Ecstatic you became, and vocal:
this touch was like no other.
When my fingers wandered up to clasp your forearm,
and the other hand slid in to take their place,
you gazed shyly, continuing the description of these touches:
so special, far different from what you expected.
It pleased me, of course it pleased me.

And so, after a while, you found my kisses sweet.
My body clasped to yours brought yours to life -
it glowed, jerked, writhed, was never still,
never for one instant was it still.
While you gave tongue to new sensations flooding in
and gave your tongue to mine, while my soft lips
(your own description) glued themselves to yours.

And so, one by one, your questions were answered.
Were you that way?
Oh yes indeed you were.
Could you kiss? You could.
Would you enjoy all the frightening reality? Oh yes you would - and did.
While the blond Tadziu, never touched; only enjoyed in fancy,
faded to the shadows of your mind.

Start of page 265 in the book

And after that you couldn't have enough.
In ways you'd known would be impossible, you blent your flesh with mine.
Delights you found: even the wrinkles round my eyes
fitted the lineaments of your new blissful love
as you gazed, incredulous, into my face:
gazed endlessly, describing your love for me
for being your first lover.

Start of page 266 in the book

Goodbye Black Lover

Goodbye black lover:
my living proof that black is beautiful,
and now mine no more.

I dance without you.
No one glides and shimmers like you do.
I move hardly at all.

Your clean slight frame
slid from the tender anger of my grasp
into the hostile street.

Easier to bear,
milder and cooler than my furnace heart,
their snubs and gibes and sneers.

And so, black lover
on your way, away from me you go.
Make a good life -

Leave all the pain behind.

Start of page 267 in the book

I Could Have Dried Your Back!

O Ken Brown!
I could have dried your back
on the day all those years ago
when we studied in that Oxford male world
in the archaic nineteen-forties.

Your slim Canadian back,
smooth skin draped and shaped,
young bone and muscle covering:
you then seemed a necessary reason
for my concealing towel.

You New World hunk with a back
stranded in postwar England
future sexlife in your wallet!
I, older but no less shy,
used that towel to screen my scream of desire.

That cursed Beth sat in your wallet -
bearskin bare skin you said with pride.
Virginal both, you both awaited
the glad graduation, departure day:
You, true, would be faithful to that.

O Ken Brown!
at eighteen you were splendid:
true to Beth-in-the-wallet,
virile and thrusting and young;
but placing all that in suspense.

We two went canoeing on the Cherwell;
I was pleased to be asked.
Slender and strong you were,
bright, clever and popular,
obviously, Oxfordly, clean.

Start of page 268 in the book

Rash as well, as you showed me,
insisting on flashing the weir.
Afterwards, splashing with you in the whirlpool,
scrambling up Magdalen bank,
I felt thankful just to be there.

Drenched, we wandered back then
dripping to Holywell Manor.
In your room we stripped off boldly,
elaborately casual:
we had to get dry, so the nude was not sensual.

Yet, O Ken Brown!
in the nude you dizzied my senses.
I used my poor towel as a screen
for the bold sudden arousal
that Beth-in-the-wallet would chop.

Peering from round that cloth barrier
Beth's hulk glared one-eyed at his oppo,
swinging limp and long, unconscious quite,
while you Ken chatted of this and that
always playing the bloodless Caucasian youth.

For fifty years O Ken!
my memory has dwelt on that hour.
I could have made some move
to lead us to everlost joy.
I could have dried your back.

Start of page 269 in the book

Gide and I

We are agreed
myself and André Gide:
so much at one,
in such complete accord.

When all is done
you know you should applaud
(but you won't).

Gide and I agree
on disagreeable things
which raise a blush
or generate disdain.

You'd want to crush
what you cannot sustain
(but you won't)

With Gide
I plead.
Together we
seek amnesty.