"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."
--G.K. Chesterton
"The man's body is sacred and the woman's body is sacred.../Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you."
--Walt Whitman
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According to the Buddha, right speech is a statement that is timely, true, kind, helpful (connected to liberation), and spoken with a mind of good-will. Let us all try to observe this precept.
Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) is acclaimed for his poems of love and longing. The website Billie Dee's Electronic Poetry Anthology includes several of his poems translated by Rae Dalven. I particularly appreciated this one, depicting the familiar tragedy of religious guilt coming between two lovers. Which of them is pursuing an illusion? Perhaps both; or perhaps the idealized lover of our imagination, whether human or divine, is a more rewarding prize than the love of an ordinary mortal.
In Despair
He has lost him completely. And now he is seeking on the lips of every new lover the lips of his beloved in the embrace of every new lover he seeks to be deluded that he is the same lad, that it it to him he is yielding.
He has lost him completely, as if he had never been at all. For he wanted -- so he said -- he wanted to be saved from the stigmatized, the sick sensual delight; from the stigmatized, sensual delight of shame. There was still time -- as he said -- to be saved.
He has lost him completely, as if he had never been at all. In his imagination, in his delusions, on the lips of others it is his lips he is seeking; he is longing to feel again the love he has known.
