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Record Perpetual Loss
Automaton whose stiffened gesture writes
footnotes to faces, none escapes your hand.
a finger irresponsible as wind
or water smoothes away all feature from
the loved image at last anonymous.
Lighter than dust the remembered kiss is lost
forever on the lip of chance. By change
the migratory heart is turned to fresh
preoccupations; hour by hour, act
by act. This counterpoint of breath removes
the past, empties the echo from the ear.
What mirror or wintry crystal may record
perpetual loss, by separation chafe
my eye to tears? This I, I was, is not
older only by years, rejects the girl
I would not recognise whose fictions grown
too thin with use are useless to refute
the cold unanswerable logic of a death.
© Mary Stanley
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