Mask of a Poet

Saint Paul, 25 February 2006

I have always imagined that paradise will be

a kind of library.

~ Jorge Luis Borges

Printer’s ink

settles to the valleys

of my fingerprint

like a bell-ringing monk

orbits a labyrinth

Some 48 years

to this unending urn

Assume a perennial mask

of purveyor of poems

Time to tie off type

Cinch up galaxies of

spacers and leading

to the dusty stacks

Borges never imagined

Fill the press bed

with few answers

Forage silent stanzas

like a deaf child

imagines sound