Mask of a Maiden
My lips are clay, for centuries unkissed.
I thought middle age would not pass so quickly.
Time is cruel. I look in the mirror.
Now the word cruel scares me.
My ambition was once
to write the starlit poems of our age,
our final words, which in any case
are just graffiti from here on out,
yesteryear straight through to the afterlife
(though wasn't the middle part
supposed to be longer?).
I wanted words to contain consciousness,
so I was a child until I was old.
Copyright Credit: Chase Twichell, "Mask of a Maiden" from Horses Where the Answers Should Have Been: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2010 by Chase Twichell. Reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press.