BEFORE A MIRROR

Now that you learn the gestures of emotion
and its vagueness among other gifts,
now that you remember and in those you remember
you are a vile loan, only mist and dust,
now that you conspire and greet and nurture yourself,
and long ago you accepted that soon,
soon you’ll be, even if you don’t desire such change,
now that you prosper in your validity of man,
consider yourself likewise vacant and damned,
until kneeling you meet
the locked up, wicked turtledove of the heart.
Clinging to its head you will be free and caught
warning miracles in each one of your parts,
and then, more than in the reason
you’d prefer to live with a shaking,
or a sleeping ribbon on your wrist.