Mask of a Maiden

My lips are clay, for centuries unkissed.

I thought middle age would not pass so quickly.

Time is cruel. I look in the mirror.

Now the word cruel scares me.

My ambition was once

to write the starlit poems of our age,

our final words, which in any case

are just graffiti from here on out,

yesteryear straight through to the afterlife

(though wasn't the middle part

supposed to be longer?).

I wanted words to contain consciousness,

so I was a child until I was old.