I have always been an admirer of both poet Walt Whitman and visual artist David Hockney. As an undergraduate composer my main portfolio piece in my final year was a work for baritone and small ensemble where I set five poems from Whitman's  epic Leaves of Grass; as a postgraduate one of my best works was inspired by David Hockney's Peter C, which hangs in Manchester Art Gallery. Both artists have created work that is unashamedly, and brilliantly, gay, but also, and more importantly, so beautifully moving and emotional. Both experiences of each work of art really spoke to me as a young gay man. I had come across 'We two boys together clinging' when reading Leaves of Grass for the first time as an undergraduate and it resonated with me so very strongly. However, I could not find a way to approach it musically and struggled to think of suitable instrumentation for such a striking, and meandering, text. Later, I came across Hockney's 1961 work of the same name, inspired by the poem, when reading a biography of the artist. I was similarly struck by the beauty of Hockney's work, again reminded of the poem, and again struggled to find a suitable musical approach for the text. Fast forward several years and I was invited to the launch of a visual art exhibition called 'Coming Out' in which a dear friend, and collaborator, Jez Dolan, had an item of work in the collection. There I, unexpectedly, stumbled upon the Hockney: it much larger and more vivid than I expected, having only seen images of the piece in books and online. At that moment, reminded of the power of both text and painting, and my recent work with a new choir, The Sunday Boys, I realised that the perfect instrumentation would be for a cappella low voices. This work is dedicated to Jez, who I would not have experienced the Hockney without. MB, January 2018 (updated November 2024)