Mark Doty
Hood
A master leads his slave
through
the bar,
the slighter man bound
to
his lodestar
by a leash hooked
to
his collar,
every surface of him swathed,
rubber,
leather,
hard to tell in this light.
Little
slits in
the hood , almost nothing
of
him visible.
They look, I think, ridiculous
--
but something
compelling about it, too.
That
you can see
only the outside, the absurd,
elaborate
clothing,
universe of buckles
and
straps,
every bit of the body
sealed
away,
so nothing of the interior
can
be known?
From a distance sex looks,
inevitably,
awful:
what’s less graceful
than
transport?
Face focussed
to
a single point,
clenched, contorted, or the mouth
stretched
wide --
Therefore this exterior’s sealed,
blank,
so that we might
guess at what lies
beneath:
happy abdication,
the will locked down at last,
unable
to choose
or to act. Who knows?
Impenetrable,
what’s paraded before us.