It informs me,
It whispers in my ear
That some large part of this event is an exercise of my
own,
My personal and, may I say,
Unique, force of will.
I cannot, even at this hour, exclude the possibility
That this dissolution could be a cantrip of a fevered mind,
veering.
Sometimes wildly, as I do, between faith and doubt
In the prowess of my imagination.
There are times when I am peopled by other lives
Flirting like fomites around me, then there are moments,
epochs
When I stare into emptiness and am alone.
The forms that appear are indistinguishable at times
From my recollections of past selves, a noria of shapes
I may once myself have been, at other times
They are strangers to me, and I weep for pity of them.
I am all I can measure, the most I can truly span
And all other words recoil from me, like the timid sins
of men.
Without the balance of diversions from these
My pointless solitudes, I merely exist and my existence
In their absence is a flawless, unvaried weave
From indulgence to the gnaw of regret.
Physical pleasures I abandoned in ancient infancy, an appetite
with ease reposed and diminished in denial
My single confident lesson to you, my one, my only precept.
The dimensions and contours of emotional fancy give depth
and current to the blackness of the pool in which I drown.
I have been depleted by these careless loves, I have induced
trembling.
I have sought advantage in love’s far from simple
faith, I have hidden from it in empty shells
I have followed vengeful ways for the sake of it and deployed
unspeakable means to steal from it small honours,
I have lusted in it and denied my true nature, I have strayed
from it in sickness at its fever,
I have soured in resentment of its imperfect response, I
have eroded myself against it.
So do not, please, speak to me of love, these things, these
loving motions you submit to or channel when afloat with
optimisms.
Of course I know it is a shock to you, my words a little
twisted and sourly self-absorbed.
I am conscious of not seeming sound, there is, you may feel,
an uncanny distance in my words, a hollow in my heart.
With me there has never been an undisguised voice through
which to speak, never a visage untouched by artifice
Even now, here, I am nowhere to be seen, I am, even here,
unheard.
