I opened up my shirt to show this man

    the flaming heart he lit in me， and I was scooped¹ up

    like a lamb and carried to the dim warm.

    I who should have been kneeling

    was knelt to by one whose face

    should be emblazoned on every coin and diadem²：

    no bare-chested boy， but Ulysses

    with arms thick from the hard-hauled ropes.

    He'd sailed past then clay gods

    and the singing girls who might have made of him

    a swine. That the world could arrive at me

    with him in it， after so much longing—

    impossible. He enters me and joy

    sprouts³ from us as from a split seed.