Second Sight

You can see him, can’t you?
I can feel him watching, looking at you
through my eyes.  Moments like these
awake his dream of freedom discovered.
More foolish than us, he cannot perceive
how illusory any freedom must be.
He will forever be powerless, unable to steal
the flame, to kindle passionate fires,
to satisfy desires he can only guess at.
 
I feel him gazing through my eyes.
I realise that you have seen his fugitive
moment, his longing. Is any of us what we seem?
You have glimpsed one of many actors
who animate the mask you took for me.
 
       How do you appear so
completely self-possessed, while I,
fragmented, seethe with longing, dread
and lust? Me, an awkward tangle of present
and past. You, so firmly compacted,
so effortlessly  part of a present reality
that I can scarcely see.