We look at each other through the mirror’s glass and laugh
to see what appearance is. Angelic and rosy. Ancient.
Both of us are pleased. You who look back
at me, take something from me—a book or this chair.
If I had any advice, you could have that too.
What was it you said? “I have not been with you
for so long—come closer, closer, closer.”
As the many pass before us so too are we traveling
without direction. You can see the future. Is it what pleases you?
And you have created a god of yourself—I can see
this clearly. Had a more delicious earthly paradise been fixed
you’d have stayed behind much longer.
That’s always how children leave the past behind them,
following something inside them, terrific and insatiable.
Finally we speak in unison—even if only to ourselves.
Unity is something worth waiting for, and rare. The voice climbs
or descends the scale with age, with experience.
Wasn’t it you who was listening as that happened to me?
Forget it. Too many singers scaling those scales.
It is an indecipherable conjunction of voices raised in emotions.
Listen to it once again, like you were still learning how.
Yes, I am pleased seeing you there, prettily composed.
Speak to me in an unaccompanied voice, some messenger
saying something foreign to yourself, with meaning
for only me. That is what I have wanted to hear again.
Won’t we always return to such desires?
No. There is no such thing as a certain course.
We continue to watch, and together we wander.