A COURTESAN'S WHIM

by: Francis Saltus (1846-1889)

O calm desires that in my soul increase,

Delicious boys with poems of blond hair,

Supple dusk-eyed, whose eager kisses rare

Are sweet as dew, no longer bring me peace.

 

I tire of effeminate charm of Greece,

These Apollonian men with bread breasts bare,

Superbly statuesque, supremely fair;--

A God himself would tempt not my desire.

 

But in vague ways I most insanely yearn

To meet some lean, dwarfed, fetid, hairy thing

With loathsome skin and bulging eyes of rheum,

Then with wild sighs to make the monster burn

With Love's delight and bid his hot arms cling

Around my beauty in the perfumed gloom.

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