(from "Hotel Room" — Modern English Adaptation)

Everything threatens us.

Time splits you apart
into living fragments:
the person I was,
the person I will become.

Consciousness,
like a snake,
like a knife,
a maze of mirrors.

A hypnotic gaze
cast by a self
already under its own spell.

Words—
gray gloves,
masks.

Even our names
rise between you and me,
building walls of emptiness
that no trumpet
can ever bring down.