The Illusion

After his death, I kept an illusion before me:
that I would find the key to him, the answer,
in the words of a play that he'd put to heart
years earlier. I'd find the secret place in him,

retracing lines he'd learned, tracking
his prints in snow. I'd discover, scrawled
in the margin of a script, a stage-note that
would clarify consciousness in a single gesture —

not only the playwright's imagery — but his,
the actor's, and his, the self's. Past thought's
proscenium: the slight tilt of Alceste's head or
his too-quick ironic bow; the long pause as Henry

Carr adjusts his straw boater; Salieri slumps at
the keyboard; Hotspur sinks into self-reflection —
where the actor disappears into physical inspiration.
Thought rises, a silent aria; thought glitters in the infinite

prism of representation. For love unrequited and tactical
hate, the shouted curse of a wretched son, a vengeful duke,
in that silent prescient dialogue — unspoken — he'd
show up in the ear, in a tone blue and sweetened as wood-

smoke, show up in these directions to the flesh: cues
like green shouts, the blood swimming with indicatives.
Look — the same smile he flashed at me
from the shaving mirror is here, right here —

but realized: I remember this path opening
in a deep forest outside Athens, the moon
shuddering into place — and no players as yet at hand.

Carol Muske-Dukes