Auburn Love Maleness Maleness Maleness
The way a twilight in the autumn turns
To unsung colors, so the chapel light
Inside the service changes from the burns
Of orange to a brown with red so slight
It slinks away as suns go down. The red
Is almost memory, not real, as he
Walks past. He turns his still advancing head
And glances like a glint of poetry.
The boy who would be poet feels that glint
Shoot down directly to his heart. Lascelles
Has wounded it and left it with a tint
Of something like the dusk of chapel bells.
Young males and boots come down the aisle tromp, tromp.
Lascelles’ hair hushes them with auburn pomp.
~ Phillip Whidden