by Julia Griffin
Björn Andrésen, Swedish actor who starred in Death in Venice, dies aged 70: Actor who also starred in Midsommar and became a musician was nicknamed ‘the most beautiful boy in the world’–a title he struggled with all his life. —The Guardian, October 27, 2025
"He is very frail, he is sickly," Aschenbach thought. "In all probability he will not grow old." And he refused to reckon with the feeling of gratification or reassurance which accompanied this notion. — Thomas Mann, Death in Venice (1912)
The man wanted him dead. That was the truth
Beyond the mere unspeakable, the shame,
The furtive stalking, the pretence at youth:
To have him die, this moonbeam boy whose name
He never knew, whose voice he never heard:
Blue eyelids closed, flesh drained to marble, cold
Child’s spirit thinned to air. The man incurred,
Thereby, his own death, endlessly retold;
The boy survived, to manhood, middle age,
Seventy years. He did his best to grow:
He bristled out, became a white-haired sage,
Outlived the man, but not the mythic glow
That doomed them both. Behold the boy, love’s prey,
Who died, at last, but never got away.
Julia Griffin has published in several online poetry magazines; lives with a socially-engaged basset hound, a regular on local demonstrations.
