American life, it simply
isn't possible to identi-
fy an instance of fusing
the erotic with the dom-
estic with the exuberant
consciousness of the ad-
ventures framed by those
shelters, that we remark
in gay couples, a cliché
representing, by the way,
all the customary victor-
ies at double or nothing.
It is what is wrong with
this picture. It made me
uneasy, too. But that is
an indulgent reaction. A
house of this kind isn't
murdered, but blasphemed
beyond recourse to pity,
beyond idylls of lament.
It conscripts our pride.
As long as the wild boar loves the mountain ridges,
As long as fish love swimming in the rivers,
As long as bees pasture upon the thyme fields,
Cicadas on morning dew, as long as this . .
Virgil
Eclogues
Eclogue V
fragment
David Ferry
translation
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999©
Alessio Pozzi
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