Actor

©  Steve King

All rights reserved

Light gone,

curtain down

echoes ringing

in high shadows—

still he hears them,

live things he’d command to follow

through the exit door

briefly into blinding light.

And those faces—

pastiche of regard

that he used as his mirror

while he preened;

strained to see them, sly,

all downstage posing, to be sure,

not watching, not the way they looked at him,

not rapt and bold and senseless;

not like poor Narcissus, no,

caught up cold within his fatal gaze,

not at all, oh no.

They never knew he watched.

He must not lose himself in their plain sight,

could not lose himself,

they could not see him seeing.

He was more clever than that, he thought.

They were but the mirror,

reflecting, quick, the flash

of all his emptied art.

And where then might he turn?

There was not space enough to be

in the midst of the new emptiness.

Surely not the exit door, not yet;

not that undiscriminating light;

not that undirected clamor

brooking no silence, no graceful stop.

How might he own all that—

The indifferent stares

that would not recognize nor linger?

How might he hold those emptied eyes,

command such casual vision

to all his well-tuned verities.

Where, oh where to turn?

If only there were mirrors cast within,

if only he might satisfy himself

without resort to any art,

without regifting his whole world at large;

if only he could see the way they saw,

simple and with clarity.

Just for the moment,

moments like this,

when lights were faded

to their shadow homes on high;

with every echo and alarm

yet resonant, reprising absent charms.