The ghost of affections, banished spirits:

Old things that rise again with the red moon.

The earth lifts a shadow boldly to its blushed roundness,

And it is partly extinguished.

In that dark instant, the eye inside opens,

And sees in a single, wincing look, the outline of forsaken,

Would-be lovers; gilded men, whose only downfall

Could be their existence. In the shroud of future-things,

They wear their bodies like old gods:

perfect mechanisms of seduction,

A noose of flesh by which to hang.

Had they materialized,

They would have been afflictions; and I know,

For I suffered many seasons by those same sins,

Sunk myself with them, buried myself under a mountain of men,

And learned to both hate, and bear

Their weight, and watched my soul drift into oblivion.

But for now, as fantasy renewed, in the warm cave of promised love, 

I find them again: covered in sweat, shining golden,

And I ache, I ache, I ache.