Nisus and Euryalus at the Louvre

West Ambrose

He shook his head and smiled, as at a child

won over by an apple, as he said:

"Well then, what are we doing on this side?"

—Purgatorio, Canto XXVII, Dante Alighieri (translated by Mark Musa)

I. 

A beautiful man approaches you in a museum gift shop

should you   

A. Talk to him

B. Ignore him

C. Make a joke about Miffy dressed as van Gogh being a Trans icon

D. Ruin his life 

E. All of The Above 

should you 

A. Get better at making choices or B. Get better at not making them alone?

There’s a scroll inside a scroll inside a case of glass. That’s called Preservation. There’s a scroll inside a scroll inside the center of a volcano. That’s called Progress. There’s a bundle of ash inside the ink melting letter into letter before they put the scraps through another MRI. That’s called Sappho. What’s left untranslatable is what becomes Desired. The glances 

we don’t get a second chance at. The brushes that stiffen like blades, then retract suddenly. 

The words we say in dark and hollow spaces, lost to absence, leaving us

reaching, grasp after grasp, even when

it’s a morning twenty years from now. Around the corner you reach for the Where will you go when— and the Did you ever love…?           and So? What does that matter to—    

The hem of your shirt the pluck of his —

touch magnify emeralds 

…for you instead? and nothing else…

The time it takes to 

restore an artefact is twice as

long as it usually stays on display—

You bring him home that night from the gift shop

and wrap him in your finest silks

you start by ruining his life

simply because it’s the easiest 

out of all the options there.

II. 

So, you think van Gogh was queer?

[he lays with his head in my lap, 

hangs his arms around my neck… ]

I think, he says, van Gogh understands what it means 

to be queer, regardless. 

There’s a difference?

Sometimes. Maybe I just want to grant him a shred 

of privacy that the modern age would leap at to take away. 

That’s chivalrous. He’s only been dead

a hundred and thirty years, or so.

Or so. 

[lilacs, he has lips like lilac petals…]

I mean, I guess I get it– is it

because of all the suffering?

Sometimes–  

[unfurling his smile blossoms–]

Sometimes?

He says, ‘I was most of all touched by Giotto

always suffering, always full of benevolence and zeal

as though he were already living in another world.’

He also loved the letters of Botticelli,

Boccaccio, Petrarch and Dante.

Right. And he didn’t need to read those

to learn to paint, either. 

Maybe he did, though. 

He thinks, ‘Now Petrarch lived very near here at Avignon and I see the same cypresses and oleanders – I have tried to put something of that into one of the gardens painted in a thick impasto of lemon yellow and lime green–’

He paints a poem… Because he doesn’t see it as incorrect. He reflects the words 

back into the image. He opens his mind to all teachers.

There are no rules to his form.

There’s no image touched by human hands 

that isn’t a poem, transmogrified…

[He kisses up the sharp

angles of my neck pulls petals apart: wants, wants, wants…]

There’s no model for longing more than that of 

wanting a teacher?

Plato and Socrates, Dante and Virgil, 

Bears and Twinks etc., it’s really

coded into that language…

…All of ancient Greece and Rome?

[I brush his hair from his eyes. 

Trail my mouth over his forehead, his curls, 

his soft where I was made of thorns…]

Mhm. And for what it’s worth, I’ve always liked the one 

about being a proverbial shaggy black dog—

…Of the family?

Of the world! Wandering aimlessly, a little 

blue and unlovable, yet filled with desire

to know the marvels of 

Nature and Beauty and Truth? And Love. 

It seems he loved his art

more than anything. That I hardly believe. 

Really?

Love isn’t a steady partner. Instead, he loves the whole world. 

He had an excess of love; he writes to his brother and like Whitman

every man becomes his brother, a comrade of the 

homosocial sphere of wanderlust, suffering, and desire…

He's also disabled and mentally ill

and neurodivergent. And dreadfully poor. 

[He laughs into the kiss; the vibration ripples 

through my skin, into my blood…]

Yes, which can resonate with a queer audience, too. 

And an excess of love,

isn’t that just an excess of suffering?

[Our bodies fold, fumble, 

plummet

in the winds of spring were we happy then?]

Sometimes. 

Sometimes, it’s a miracle. 

III. 

He has such delicate hair. More luxurious than anything else you’ve ever been allowed to hold—the scraps of baroque manuscripts and Japanese silks, all alone behind glass; the unrepaired paintings and crumbling sculptures and plaster shards, stunning, unable to be fixed; like all those years of History, who's allowed to reach out and touch? Who's allowed to destroy in an attempt to restore? How hard do you pull when he says Harder; fold on fold, deliciously scattered that fine gold; the ground is a slow moving

fragment 

you record

his sighs inside you

burning

your chest pressedtohisback

rocking your hips

too slowly 

too softly

too slowly

rocking that bureau mazarin

clawfoot bathtub window shudder 

too slowly 

too softly

too slowly

heat and lightning

languid then Wild

make him hard again 

and then make him scream

 Harder

Harder

Harder

amidst the ashes we changed this earth 

to some celestial isle—

Skip the train terminal 

before the hotel can find a number 

to tell you.

Everywhere

the room was set on fire. 

IV. 

After Amsterdam

we keep in touch

a couple moonlit walking paths here

a few hotel bars there

longer than I expect

but shorter than 

I find myself wanting 

to know more about that one, he says. We stop by the department of sculptures

Richelieu

lower ground floor

Cour Puget:

…Exhibited at the 1822 salon…

…Depicts Virgil's tragedy of….

…refugees, something in common…

…Euryalus misses his mother…

…Does he? Where did they record that?

And is that why everyone thinks he’s younger?

…We don’t know if the sculpture was

queer

we just never thought to…

…Doesn’t tragedy make everyone younger?

…please, feel free to contact the archives across the city…

The next statue, over here…

Let him argue with the curators. It’s kind of fun, mostly. He’s never stuck up about it.

Worse, he’s usually right. 

Later, in the blue-grey surge of midnight, we watch the waves from

the back of a bistro on a pier

he asks Do you think it’s a crime to not call home for years?

I shrug.

I wouldn’t know, I breathe into his shoulder.  

But you

you could find out.

V.

If you leave your mother

then you go to war for me

If you leave your mother

then you throw over your

sisters mistresses brides

that will twist you into 

a lame animal to be shot 

and buried 

without a grave if you leave your mother 

you leave behind 

the lashes and the lashes and the lashes 

that will never soften 

with all your tears; if you leave your mother

then you fight with me 

grit your teeth and grunt with me

flirt and punch and fuck with me

wrap me in your tourniquet and puncture me 

with your arrows too; practice your aim 

and strike the bargain from the high beam

kiss open mouth after open mouth

gasping the unlanded, gasping the wounds

gasping the target, gasping the bow, taut, strung 

and waiting 

you make a man out of what you love

             so I take your hands 

and show you 

       how to make me cry. 

VI.

In the dark, his voice glows

 cool and gentle, a weightless teal shimmer:

Baby? He whispers.

He wraps his legs tighter around mine. 

W-what?

You don’t remember?

  My body tenses. My legs shake. 

Something of me remembers, even when I don’t.

Then he slots his calves under; 

pressure, sweet and firm…

Breathe.

[The night has too many teeth; 

what did dreaming ever spit back out but a mess?]

Breathe. Please. 

I do, eventually. 

Not well, though.

Again. Long and deep. 

His legs and mine, his stomach and my spine, 

fold and fold and fold; the colors mix; 

Who are you, if not me? I wanted to ask.

And if not you, then who will I become?

All lavender and gray pearls,

Indistinguishable—

Breathe. I do

but only because 

he wants me

[what is war but a memory

that refuses to belong to the past?]

That’s…a bit better.

The sweat on my forehead 

drips into my eyes.

Good. 

Good boy. 

I reach for his lips as he speaks:

Just, just so you know, 

it’s been a few months, I haven’t—

I’m not your keeper.

All dead to me. Promise. But how do you—

  I was built alone. 

Like it that way and you know it, too.

Where will I go?

One day, where everyone I’ve loved 

goes—somewhere else, hopefully 

somewhere they belong...

Kiss him anyways, taste how

he moves forward

  the grind of his hips

the laurels of his fingertips

around my shoulders— Push down whatever resurfaces, 

the sphere-head of R.E.M. 

dripping, 

unable to dislodge:

[rows and rows of them, 

sharpening, sinking in;

the night, his mouth

the spheres covered in blood

but together, could we really have more than anyone? 

Who invented hunger

if not the ravenous?]

And what about you? He asks.

What about me?

Where do you belong?

I press into him. Harder, I whisper 

until he takes my tears in his closed fists,

all salt and watercolours and fragments, evaporating...

He does not say I will always be with you.

I do not say When I refuse, follow me still, 

haunt me, please. 

[Were we Autumn’s lost children,

season’s changing 

in each other’s grasp, all the same

so that we were 

eternally dying

 in the arms of a friend

were we happy then?] 

VII. 

This must work in reverse. 

Somehow, I’ve always believed 

Virgil was trying to paint 

         a picture

of what it’s like to be a refugee 

and accidentally gives us a

a plethora of modern palettes

  to decipher 

our pasts 

and lack of them

ravaged by worlds that force us to choose

run or stay, run or stay 

or run again and again and again?

My brushes are dirty

the pink berries of

beggars and sailors 

and runaway-rough hands

crushed

to stroke

[sweet man,

so unheard of, it becomes your infamy…] 

that I can only tell them 

Tenderness is what we seek—

If there is violence

he never caused it

if there is flames everywhere

he only did the damnable thing

the noble thing

the buried-forgotten thing

the footnote attached to an otherwise

uninteresting epic

at times

such mercurial antiquated creatures 

fade from view

(this is true…)

the footprints 

lost to ash

(it takes time

it takes time

it  takes time)

always remerge

resplendent in their blaze

now and sometimes

here and forever

perfectly winged.

VII. 

Go to your wars

and I’ll go fight mine

alone and captured

in the husk of a pomegranate

in the heart of a myth

surrounded by

so many strangers

weeping

[reaching…]

after Amsterdam

after France 

and Italy too

I’ll meet you by the tombs

take off your binder [reaching…]

and I’ll take off mine

show me your scars

and I’ll put my lips along 

all the bruises 

we made [reaching…]

to be free.

It scared me when it would 

happen— I scared you. 

No, I was so scared for you

I couldn’t reach you

I couldn’t know if you were safe or not

I called out for you

so many times

[reaching…] I thought I killed you again.

You only do that when you leave, he takes my hands. [His touch swims 

so I guess you did. 

same as always, 

lilac and gold,

above me, protecting—]

His touch

months from now

or years…

I’ll feel it again

maybe we’ll be 

running

Darling, maybe you’ll be 

my tragic letter in the dark

my sacred messenger

torn from demise              [reaching…]

my shield of 

      [reaching…] clay and ivory 

pleading If there is such a thing as history

then you need to tell ours

[If there is such a thing as history

it’s not something that should be allowed

to eat you up, until you’re starving blind…]

the plastered frame

that keeps our heads 

from hanging 

in a gallery

for the gluttoned world 

to gaze upon

your body over mine:

‘Torture,’ ‘Passion,’ or ‘In-Vain?’

Your body fated

as mine

[reaching…] connected in the

knot of our hands

your body and my body

forever their question 

to contend

amidst the six-thousand soldiers

  [reaching…]

torrential javelins and arrows 

of scholarly debate

weighing down

[he picks me up, again and again, and…] the poppy’s head

of these nine billowing circles

flames roaring 

our lovegrief without end

Were we

were we

were we happy then?