Graphic by Ella Sylvie
For Benedict Wong
It has stilled to the rhythm of the elegy the wave drums out against Coney Island, unquiet yearning like saudades in flesh Wrathful Orpheus & cursed Daphne these are now the only saints you understand Martyrdom withheld & you endure, languishing at the apple tree, celestial garden a gilded cage What you would give to descend to the land of the sybaritic sinners, where your beloved frolics at midnight in the bygone cathedral, wretchedly unaware, rare devotion in a brief body, preserved for another blessed thief, a lesser corporeal