The reader must be carried to the point where he should conclude
that the work is an accident, and the author a peculiarity.
—Paul Valéry
*
When I was young, I spit
into the pool, then watched
the tepid foam-of-me
dissolve and cool and ripple
outward from my self’s
cold calm reflection.
Grown into my desire,
in later years I rigged
a mirror system, reflecting
my reflection from behind.
By then, I knew my eyes,
but not my nape, my skull.
Now, I seldom stare,
or strain to catch a glimpse
in glass or puddled water.
But in the dark, I hold
my many selves as one—
the one I will relinquish.
*
When I was young, I spit into the pool
and marked that tepid foam-of-me a fool,
too swiftly cooled, too soon dispersed—dissolving
in the rings of ripples round my gaze revolving.
Full-grown into that gaze, in later years,
I blinked at frontal hopes.
……………………………………….Yet, nether fears! —
I studied them in mirrored mirrored mirrors,
and verified the darkened side of spheres.
My eyes are weary now, averse to glare.
Likewise, to knife-edged focus. I’ve stripped them bare
of all reflection in the dark that breeds them
and where, erased, I shall no longer need them.
*
I watched my gob of phlegm drip down
the polished glass that held my image
and I did not flinch, I faced my face, my own,
the thief and the reflector, both thrower and thrown.
I did not drown, but bathed my burning eyes
in time. The architect, the sculptor of my gaze,
time turned them, turned them on its wheel, its lathe,
to cradle, skull and bowl—to empty grave
where gather now the ghosts of all my faces,
camera-less, without obsessed reflection,
each fly’s eye calmed by cyclopean graces
of looming dark, which focuses, erases.
*
On recent shoreside visits, I still mark
…………..that rundown old motel,
that dreary room atop a single flight
…………..of creaky wooden steps,
and that battered bathroom mirror where I spit
…………..at my bemused reflection—
before I ventured out to cruise the bars,
…………..to seek the eyes of others.
It took some years to lose that tired textbook
…………..sense of self-contempt,
to clarify my self-to-self’s rude gesture.
…………..That single splash of spit
was the impatient boat by means of which
…………..I crossed my first abyss:
the distance, clear as glass, that lies between
…………..the seer and the seen.
I went exploring then, around and through,
…………..ahead and far behind—.
By now these eyes of mine, as mind, have mined
…………..ten thousand times
ten thousand selves, a shimmering collection
…………..of shades of seeing being.
The lamps have cooled, the current rises
…………..to scar the silvered surface
that carries all my faces out to sea,
…………..to where I am not me.
*
Slashed with spit, lost youth all bespattered in fragments;
pooled no more, my gaze, become re-definer;
eyes ashift through cisterns of bar-lit shadow—
…………..witness, collector!
Overcrowded lens! Soon re-polished by absence,
filled with eyeless skulls, with a vigil grown vatic!
Eye of mine, your pool once again awaits you,
…………..dry now, and blinded.
Focused face to no face with an empty place,
every vision, every snapshot is shrinking
from eye to inner eye to its closing lid—
…………..being un-manned.
*
My heart of spit lies scattered on a glass
which the fire in my soul can’t understand.
My colder self just dries its brow and laughs.
The mirror becomes pool. My eyes expand.
The pool is in my eye now. And what’s outside
will dive or float, will sink or splash or swim,
will share the naked truths, the brazen lies—
ten thousand are the ways to enter men!
I turn my face back to my refugee,
my poor self mired in riches. I close my eyes.
The many now are one. —Is one too many?
Ears scour the dark for vision’s vacant sighs.
I think I hear faint strains of Orphic flute.
When will the questioner fall senseless, mute?
*
There was a young faggot, self-schooled,
who’d studied his face in a pool.
When he glimpsed his own ass
in a cracked whiskey glass,
well, he knew he’d been played for a fool.
*
And also the recognition of the pure or absolute Me,
the Me = Zero which is identical in us all, rejects all, is opposed to all.
And yet is the nexus of sensibility and “consciousness”.
—Paul Valery