Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

The summer demands and takes away too much. /But night, the reserved, the reticent, gives more than it takes

Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.

Some day we will try To do as many things as are possible And perhaps we shall succeed at a handful Of them, but this will not have anything To do with what is promised today, our Landscape sweeping out from us to disappear On the horizon.

Its a bit mad. Too bad, I mean, that getting to know each just for a fleeting second Must be replaced by unperfect knowledge of the featureless whole Like some pocket history of the world, so general As to constitute a sob or wail

It is the lumps and trials That tell us whether we shall be known And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.

You bad birds, But God shall not punish you, you Shall be with us in heaven, though less Conscious of your happiness, perhaps, than we. Hell is a not quite satisfactory heaven, probably, But you are the fruit and jewels Of my arrangement . . .

Some day I'll claim to you how all used up I am because of you but in the meantime the ride Continues.