Sir Stephen Spender
(February 28, 1909 – 1995)
Sign: Pisces
Bisexual (though favoring boys) prolific English poet whose writings like The Temple (writ. 1928, pub. 1988) and The God that Failed (1949) engaged the political upheavals of his age and the difficulties in situating homosexuality in a straight world.
“As I sit staring…”
As I sit staring out of my window
Wasting time which the traffic does not waste,
Nor any of the passers by in the street
Who keep time with time as they go
Measuring the seconds with their feet,
In their minds riding the crested tide
On white horses of pursuant days
I think of you, James, at another window
With your stubby hands relaxed and your blue gaze
Invaded by a sense of emptiness,
Startled as if a gust of air,
Had blown through the interstices
Of your mind and hair,
Ruffling your forehead with a puzzled despair.
But I have learned lately that the spaces
And the timeless loneliness
Of the unfruitful waste places,
The desert, the untidy room, and the hour
Between waking and sleep,
Are windows opened onto power
Where we become most what we are,
When the conscious eye and ear
Are severed from what they see and hear
And in the hollow silent blackness deep,
Living tunes and images flower.
“Faggot Forefathers” is a weekly series highlighting the lives of historically significant gay men and their contributions to our world.
