16."A Stint of Checking"

Illusions draw us together; but the truth tears us apart.
Imagining we're free of pretence may be the cruellest art.

This seeming wilderness is really a garden run riot.
It was left to pullulate with weeds by a too timid heart.

He dreams, one day being lost to her will show him more truly.
He would've been ashamed thinking something like this at the start.

At night the garden's so dim he's glad he's got these paths he made
restlessly pacing the invisible vectors of his chart.

What kind of person would he have to become, to encounter
love as a lover of freedom--what mask, what gestures, what part?

If he could just understand how the garden always changes
while his eyes repeat their despairing fictions & clench the dart...

But this troubadour of barred towers will go on bleeding out
contemptible hymns, till devotion & possessiveness part.