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