“Visitation" by Tony Hoagland (1953-2018)

Now when I visit Ellen’s body in my memory,
it is like visiting a cemetery. I look
at the chiseled, muscular belly
and at the perfect thirty-year old breasts
and the fine blond purse of her pussy
and I kneel and weep a little there.
I am not the first person to locate god
in erectile tissue and the lubricating gland
but when I kiss her breast and feel
the tough button of her nipple
rise and stiffen to my tongue
like the dome of a small mosque
in an ancient, politically-incorrect city,
I feel holy, I begin to understand religion.
I circle around to see the basilica
of her high, Irish-American butt,
and I look at her demure little asshole
and am sorry I didn’t spend more time with it.
And her mouth and her eyes and white white teeth.
It’s beauty beauty beauty which in a way Ellen
herself the person distracted me from. It’s
beauty which has been redistributed now
by the justice of chance and the temporal economy.
Now I’m like a sad astronaut living
deep in space, breathing the oxygen of memory
out of a silver can. Now I’m like an angel
drifting over the surface of the earth,
brushing its meadows and forests
with the tips of my wings,
with wonder and regret and affection.

for The Best American Erotic Poems (Scribner, 2008, I asked Tony to name his favorite erotic book or author, and he replied:

<<    Some of the most exciting erotic writing I know is ninth of Rilke’s famous Duino Elegies, in which the poet queries,  demands, praises, promises and then swooningly yields to be entered completely by earth—“Earth, isn’t this what you want? An invisible re-arising in us? …What is your urgent command, if not transformation?” (translation Spender / Leishman)

The extended passage is unmistakably the address of an ardent lover to the beloved, and Rilke’s athletic, tremulous syntax, in its urging, falling back, swooping climaxes and surrenders, is thrillingly sexy in its brilliant performance of both masculine and feminine roles.  Rilke reminds us how dramatically, heroically, erotic spiritual life can be, and his enactment of inner life sweeps through categories in glorious encounter and catharsis. It’s hot stuff, and it always makes me want to pray harder.
>> 

from the archives; posted October 02, 2019

Comments

[Peter Fortunato]

Wonderful to re-read this. I give thanks!