A THEORY OF IDENTITY

Je est un autre
(Rimbaud)

1.

for what use language puts us into use?
what see things that see their selves through my eyes?
most mornings, when I gaze in the glass
it is a fortune I can notice my own features

in the mirror my face faces me as a sphinx,
and since I can’t escape my own maze,
its mouth full of void
swallows up my voice

I presume we must all be but rivers of Is and yous,
whirlpools that revolve around no nucleus,
shadows that can’t be fed and feed the hunger,
friends that won’t be met and can only wonder




2.

my name is throng and I talk in all the tongues,
I walk in each and every feet and squeeze
in my thousand hands the hands of all that greet me
by my own name, for my name is every man’s,
and I see even through the eyes of those
who go past pretending not to see us both

I never follow without a company,
and when I say what I fail to get over,
my friend stands for me,
and when I ache my aches and pains
my brother offers to my proud or shame
a sheltering shoulder.

Then I feel like melting our communicant souls together,
but soon realise I cannot help carrying on by my own,
and each day I use I feel smaller than one day ago,
for I can’t attain what dwells out of the grips
of a greedy but limited memory, and so am unable to reach
for whatever lies beyond the brinks of one single body

And thus each person amounts to
no more than one closed book


3.

on occasions I feel utterly bewildered at
the unfailing richness of this universe,
wishing I could only deserve
all of the gold squandered at dawn and
all of the copper to be robbed from dusk

I almost forget that my eyes never guard much of them,
that I've already seen so many, but even if I strained my best,
I couldn't possibly shake them with my hands from their rest
and might as well remain trapped inside my own inside,
like a reflex stuck in the looking-glass

for I am no matter what I am told
my own bored prisoner of a body
which controls me like an automaton.
one day, if Death comes,
it won’t ignore what it came for:

Death shall extinguish
just my flesh - and, in the end of the day,
who knows if I can only be found
there
where I will never be met