|
| God snaps your picture : don't look away -- |
| this room right now, your face tilted |
| exactly as it is before you can think |
| or control it. Go ahead, let it betray |
| all the secret emergencies and still hold |
| that partial disguise you call your character. |
| |
| Even your lip, they say, the way it curves |
| or doesn't, or can't decide, will deliver |
| bales of evidence. The camera, wide open, |
| stands ready; the exposure is thirty-five years |
| or so -- after that you have become |
| whatever the veneer is, all the way through. |
| |
| Now you want to explain. Your mother |
| was a certain -- how to express it?
-- influence. |
| Yes. And your father, whatever he was, |
| you couldn't change that. No. And your town |
| of course had its limits. Go on, keep talking : |
| Hold it. Don't move. That's you forever. |
|
|
|
