Tumescence at 22
                  
             for Stephen
                                 
              by Susan Stevens

			         
So your coveting knowledge has become woman-desire:
To know, but in the biblical sense—rather
to plumb the fruit-flesh than the intellect,
another ecstasy, a different shrine.

How may you translate for her the seduction of your eyes
from intellect to raw sense?  She will not see
the move from searching eyes to virginal hands as treason;
that groping at concepts will be needed here also.
Sensuality wants intellect.  And we who are charged
with intellectualizing everything
will die again and again with minds
swollen in concupiscent thought