The envied sunset, lost to him, his fearsome sword bright bloodying?

Or was he from the heavens cast ere human hymn to God was sung

The Most High's first forsaken child uncrowned, unwinged by mortal eye?

Did once his footfall sound a note not thunderous but light as spring

His tidings not so dire as now but filled instead with sweet desire?

Wherefore this breath of timelessness, this twilit ghost of memory

And whence this similarity to images from ages past?

No more than practicality, as though the only truth were wine

Ruby and peridot in turn reflecting, dodge the source of light

Mirror upon mirror diverts the moon, for still I see the moon

Or what yet lies behind this face, inscrutable animation

Carnival-bright, abysmal-dark, an aviary of feather masks

Still flee before the wind of Time when other eyes, now long since closed

Strip him naked with telltale art to clothe him but in older myths

How paradoxical, this proof of constancy in Fancy's court!

How comforting to so dismiss him, oil on canvas, fable's child

Fortuitous his apparition here and now in flesh and blood.

More troubling and more lingering his tireless leaps from guise to guise

In this, the clay no sculptor touches but the One who touches all

What wound pours forth this constant fount of near-frenzied inventiveness

And who, indeed, has not seen him, within her own soul's looking-glass?