In the glittering mirrors of society, I seek my place,
and ask the question, Who am I?
I wear the masks of Commedia dell’arte and Noh
that others made artistically, carefully,
a moulded self, constructed with borrowed robes.
Yet beneath this ruse, another question stirs, What am I?
In the quiet, it occurs, when the masks are
placed in their neat case
and there is just the silence of the room.
I am a creature of earth and breath.
I am a living being that faces death.
Bones and flesh, bound to the soil,
with a body that yearns, that loves, that toils.
I am a pulse in the veins of time
and a rhythm that echoes nature’s rhyme.
I hunger, I thirst.
I bleed with blood, I feel the Curse.
I walk this world, as a creature with kin,
alone and in shared existence
as something and nothing.
This masked identity is but a shifting thing, like fashion.
In fragile form, I find my peace,
in the breath that fills my chest,
in seeking my guest in the world like Don Quixote.
Who am I? This question fades with the passing of day.
What am I? In truth, I wade—a creature of life, a being of clay,
bound but somehow delightfully free.

 

23/8/2024