I have one other request.
And I'll recite that now also, plus a reprise.
This is called the "Mirror Perilous."
And it's a takeoff on the Narcissus legend.
The title is from Chaucer.
The Mirror Perilous--
I guess there is a garden named Garden of Love.
If so, I'm in it.
I am the guesser in the garden.
There is a notice by the central pond that reads,
Property of Narcissus.
Trespass at your own risk.
So I went there.
That is where, having won but disdain, the lady,
he fell for his own face and died rightly,
not having followed through, as the sentence read,
read by the lady.
Oh, you could hear her crying all about the wilderness
and wickedness of law.
I looked in that famous mirror perilous, and it wasn't much.
My own face, beautiful, and at the bottom, bone,
a rusty knife, two beads, and something else I cannot name.
I drank my own lips on the dare but could not
drink the lips away.
The water was heavy, cool, and clear but did not quench.
A lady laughed behind my back.
I learned the worst.
I could take it or leave it, go or stay.
So I went back to the office drunk, possessed
of an echo but not a fate.