Narcissus In this season of the long shadow, Of sunsets like rust and discarded lips I grow tired of the Self Its abandoned ports, dilapidated wharves, Still green waters dense with certainty, The wrinkled inlets with their crumbling depositories Perched like sleepy vultures on the heights I have tired of Colonial campaigns and Sluggish ceremonies of remembrance, Of ignorance seductive as a plume and Sharp as slate I am tired More from pride than from disgust, From unused limbs at the periphery, From all the crowded selves Outside that hem me Inward, Their urgent succulence of Predictable delights, The armories of beauty and forgetfulness And you are tiresome too, Like me, Your eyes, like mine, Your secrets and your promises No longer beckoning, So sheer the bend of past and Overbright the captive stream ________________________________________________________________________ Emanuel E. García, A Deeper Symmetry, 2014 |