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    AC Benus
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Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 47. ...Grant him to me...

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When strolling through the flower mart,

I saw him there, twinging crimson buds

amongst barbs of berries: I was wounded.

 

I paused only to find myself whispering,

“What price, dear lad, need I pay

to win your crowning wreath?”

 

He blushed fairer than his rosebuds,

gazed upon the ground, and replied,

“Be gone, sir, ‘fore my father spies us.”

 

I bought some garlands as pretense to linger,

but returning home, in earnest I draped

the family altar. My prayer: “Grant him to me.”

—Strato of Sardis,[i]

circa 145

 

 

 

 


[i] “When strolling through the flower mart” Strato of Sardis Musa Puerilis

_

as noted
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Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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Though centuries separate me from this poet, still I yearned as he did after men who captivated me. He wrote of this far more elegantly and eloquently than ever I could.

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A beautiful (too short!) poem which shows how different perspectives on same sex love were a long time ago. Sometimes I question if our society as a whole has advanced in respecting differences or if it is just the case we are simply getting back to attitudes and conceptions commonly accepted twenty centuries ago.

Thanks again, @AC Benus, for bringing beautiful inspiring words our way.

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On 2/5/2022 at 9:11 AM, Parker Owens said:

Though centuries separate me from this poet, still I yearned as he did after men who captivated me. He wrote of this far more elegantly and eloquently than ever I could.

Thank you, Parker. Another translation of this Ancient Greek poem partially inspired me to write Hymenaios many years ago. It feels nice bring it full circle and try my own hand at Strato's beautiful love poem.

Thanks again

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On 2/5/2022 at 11:44 AM, JACC said:

A beautiful (too short!) poem which shows how different perspectives on same sex love were a long time ago. Sometimes I question if our society as a whole has advanced in respecting differences or if it is just the case we are simply getting back to attitudes and conceptions commonly accepted twenty centuries ago.

Thanks again, @AC Benus, for bringing beautiful inspiring words our way.

Thank you, JACC, for your thoughtful reply. I'm afraid we as a minority group will never advance to the natural way things were in the past with the sword of the 19th century's invention of a "sexuality" looming over out heads. This is the thing that continues to other us in society today, although 99.99% of all other Victorian notions (like social darwinism; Empire's might-is-right; the white man's rule; women as property of men in marriage, etc. etc. etc) have all fallen. And yet, today even LGBT+ people marginalize themselves unthinkingly by aping and allowing the H-word to be used concerning them. As if Black people in the 21 (f-ing!!!) century would allow them to be talked "about" as n*gr*s. Gay people are weak-minded, I'm afraid, and do not even enforce their self-chosen term of minority status. 

Not until we band together and force them to drop their sexualizing of  our very existence will things ever return in Western society to where they should have always belonged. 

(thanks for letting me rant...)    

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