Imprisoned behind a window’s pane
Alone within my lonely room
I can see someone standing there
Despite the evening’s rising gloom . . .
Perhaps you’d judge someone you saw
If you found them gazing in at you
But if the truth’d be generally known
There’s little else for me to do!
The man standing there I now recall
Bent now by time and long regret
Has looked in at me once or more before
(I wonder if he’s recognised me yet).
So silently at me he looks
But makes no judgement or demands
He’s burdened by a heavy weight
Under which he suffers and still stands.
Memories are surfacing now
He came to call on me before
In a time of youth and pride
It was only self-righteousness I saw.
He had but a halted interest
In noticing me there at all
Impatient for the waiting life
That did him so loudly call…
Now as if opening a musty volume
It’s through my memories that I am sifting
I’ve seen on him some other faces
As if time itself his masks were shifting
Once looking in a fear intense
He saw me as a ghostly shade
Though I was too a child like him
‘T was Imprisoned behind a window’s pane
Afterwards an apparition did appear
That the world had spurned
I was unsettled by his second visit
A bloody image upon my retinas stayed burned.
As an object often looked at, rarely seen
I wish I’d warned him when he came
To hide all that made him different
(‘t is far preferable to appear to be the same)
But like all sycophants like me
Seen in a moment’s reflected haze
I can simply do no more
Than return his mirrored gaze.
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Last modified: 16 May 2013
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