Love's Absence (1990)

LOVE’s absence deprives life’s brazen frame –
     leaves an abyssal void which maims:
VISIONS erotic the heart cannot deny,
     awakes yeraning, demands a sigh,
     should courageously wait and unhappily lie
     ( a silhouette on a pyre
     engulfed by silky sheets of fire)
     tries in vain, remain, kiss your eye
     the muse awakes, fleet-footed flies
     discovers too late, an empty bed
     scent marks where you have laid
     arouse the senses, might not placate
     must bait, or patiently wait
     instigate, create or contemplate
     (this desired union
     an improbable return)
     to the gilded state
     and thus avert Fate.


London
19 March 1990


This is a recollection of Mark McCallum, who adopted and used his maternal surname, Carter. He inherited some small fortune, and was clubbing in tee-shirt and denim dungaries and jacket, I think somewhere near Max’s off Bayswater. He was with some British Airways pilot, but was always out on guys’ night for a good time, which he knew very well how to get it. He was, by all accounts, an English “party boy”. He brought me to London’s famed boys’ strip club, then run by a famous Singaporean “queen”. Impressive getting around with him.

Another thing Mark did after we caught Les Miserables together, was bring me to the cast’s favourite restaurant after the show, where I got to meet some of the chorus members, saw Angela Lansbury, and I was literally checked up Joan Collins. This splendid restaurant near Covent Garden is wholly unmarked, and distingished by the red brickwork walls.