From the Preface to Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog:
…I would rather have this volume filed under AIDS than under Poetry, because if these words speak to anyone they are for those who are mad with loss, to let them know they are not alone…. The story that endlessly eludes the decorum of the press is the death of a generation of gay men. What is written here is only one man’s passing and one man’s cry, a warrior burying a warrior. May it fuel the fire of those on the front lines who mean to prevail, and of their friends who stand in the fire with them. We will not be bowed down or erased by this. I learned too well what it means to be a people, learned in the joy of my best friend what all the meaningless pain and horror cannot take away–that all there is is love. Pity us not.
Paul Monette
Los Angeles
29 June 1987
Steve
April 28, 1948 — June 14, 1992
I would stand in the fire with you again always.