The Mirror

So intimate each night, she heaves her breath
against my skin. I hold firm, but it fails,
it fails, glimpsed and elusive as a ghost.

Soon the ghost will die, soon will vanish down
the unlit corridors and anterooms
implicit in my many-angled heart.

When I decide, I summon her, and she,
thinking herself important, comes trailing
the rigmarole of ashen hands. I note

her still warm eyes, her carious teeth, but
cannot quite despise her, for she is mine,
and what I invent I must comprehend.

Nothing exists except through me, nothing
is born but I possess it forever -
an immortality like love or death.
...