SELF-PORTRAIT

That resigned look! Here I am,

it says; fifty-nine,

balding, shirking the challenge

of the young girls. Time running out

now, and the soul

unfinished. And the heart knows

this is not the portrait

it posed for. Keep the lips

firm; too many disappointments

have turned the mouth down

at the corners. There is no surgery

can mend those lines; cruelly

the light fingers them and the mind

winces. All that skill,

life, on the carving

of the curved nostril and to no end

but disgust. The hurrying eyes

pause, waiting for an outdistanced

gladness to overtake them.