Lover of the Sun

Hello Everyone,

I'm finally settled into my new job (btw, I got a new job), so now I can more consistently post some content. Springtime has proven to be a much needed cure for my creative blocks, allowing me to spend more time focusing on my photography and my writing. My poetry was a bit slow for a while, but now I'm starting to pick it up again, focusing on works from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, writing in the tradition of Michael Field (aka Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper). Below is a poem based on Benjamin West's "The Death of Hyacinth" (1771). Onward to more writing!

-Noah
Open your mind, be brave, and be kind. 

Hyacinthus (2019)

Sunburnt roses on my shoulder,
at my temples and thighs,
stinging, caressing with the promise
of another day amid the fields
and running among columns and marble
throngs of heroes.

As the light dances across my skin,
gilded fingers against the glistening
summer sweat wiped away by soft grass,
I hear the whisper of something, someone
forgotten, a lingering touch on my head,
behind the tree under which we lay.

Pulled by the threads, woven into creation
and out again, the sun must set,
but the wind seldom dies. Even silence
of night cannot shield its embrace,
not even while the charioteer rides over me.
A simple breeze, breath, cuts the thread.

One wrong turn, and the pivoting
to meet one’s end at the hand of immortality,
which is no more than a friendly game.
And when you fall, the sun falls with you
down to earth, laying with you
in the soft grass one last time.

Each moment, cradled in your light,
is an treasure priced at one thousand
kisses, cries, clinging to life for one
final time. It this my punishment?
Like so many others who have flown
too close to your heavenly splendor.

How many of my brothers, and sisters
too, have tried to love you, foolishly.
Waxen wings and prophecies aren’t enough
for you, I’m certain. Although I’m glad
the Fates humored me for this long,
and you stayed until the end.

This pain, breaking my tender frame,
seems to me, meek, when compared
to the anguish on your face. Why then,
do you weep for me? You have seen
and loved a thousand years and more
than I could ever dream of.

Surely you have more hearts in hand
than stars in your sister’s velvet sky.
What makes me, a child at play,
more special than the others? Perhaps,
because unlike princesses and charioteers,
my only crime was loving you.

But then, humans are mere pets, toys
for Olympian whims. Our paltry offerings
and rites are aimed to please, and tease
out some grand favor that seldom comes.
All I did was make you happy, for a time,
and our sacrament was nothing but a game.

My body, a mortal frame, filled with colors
of lovers, and you the gilded brush, caressing
me with brilliant strokes.
I suppose I was a reflection of you, hung
on the wall of your world, until the angle
​of the universe brought me crashing down.

Enfolded in crimson and tears, searing
and dripping from amber eyes, and falling
to bronzed skin, glittering and cold.
Lips, petals, against mine, one last time
as the earth swallows my flesh, and I grow,
reaching for the heavens and my beloved.

Now I stand, swaying, brushed and kissed
by the everlasting touch of two lovers,
entrapped, eternal, and forever at rest
in the meadow of our love long gone.
All that remains of my fleeting youth
is the sun on my skin, and a gentle breeze.