Self- By George Woodcock

Always the circle of mirrors is unbroken,
I am the person encountered at every turn
like the lead penny or perpetual ghost

It is easy to stay, it would be easiar to go
If I were not the circles, the mirrors grow
to fingers cutting off the friendly west.

And to each finger is myself as a stranger,
disorted to a grey saint or sinister lounge,
It is myself I must break to leave the circle.

It is myself I must break If I am to
reach the temperate west and love the skipped age
where the lips are not fettered or the heart single.

But it is easy to stay in the sloth that I hate,
dreading and desiring always to meet
the real stranger who will light my day.

It is so easy to wait for the mirrors to crack
instead of smashing and risking the ache
of myself broken to set a future free.