Manipulate the Mask

Manipulate the mask.

Perhaps that’s all we ask.

Regenerate the sweeter falsity –

say, play the waltz that he

recorded on the radio

so long ago –

the rippling importuning of which

would attune most any ear to switch

the fear of love to love –

to reach the hidden dove

in every heart, induce desire –

in fact, require

that it soar out from its lair

and find its yearning there

and lavish every thought of him

with what it carefully had brought of him

to light and sound from silence in the dark.

That was long ago. The park

that they took walks in now

had taught them once just how

debilitating jealousy could be.

How zealously he

offered his abject remorse:

he’d had to change his course,

he said, he’d fallen for –

it didn’t matter who, the door

had shut. So what could bring

the hastily abandoned thing

of them together?

What still was here? A tether

tugged them back: they found the masks

they’d worn. They put them on. The tasks

they were to carry out appeared.

Behind their masks, their vision cleared.

This loosed the knot within.

And love awoke, forgot the sin.

.