"What Was Your Original Face, Before You Were Born?"
                                                           --Zen teaching

When I clean the mirror in moon light
It is to uncover my original face,
Hidden from myself all these dissembled years.
I have stolen away to this secret place
To example this portrait of my fears.

I have come to offer myself to the mirror,
And gather the many into the unknown one.
It is out of focus at first, as if still new.
But I can see that it is unsympathetically true.
And it is too late to wish I had not begun.