needing a mirror to hang his silence in
but the mirror had cracked with all that singing
a babel of reflections

these pieces, made into an answer
with nothing behind it
it's 'all dressed up and nowhere to go'

yes it's brisk in this light
reflection's denial of substance
as the city unravels

the anti-narcissus machine
here's a mirror that turns you away
it drinks up the ground

disappears into distant dry hills
an insubstantial tower's
glass wall will remember

afterwards here in Mirror City
mirror will drink you and drink you
return you the stranger you are to yourself

its short glitter
                     dismantled
it's piled up on the gallery floor

self-quoting     the mirror
'tells each of me who I am'
a footnote. I hurried away

as if having
escaped from the earth
I had learned how to float

while seen from the bridge
late at night here is a man
in shirtsleeves, still working

immigrant   guardian   watcher
in his uniform   steps out
to look at all those lights

how all this silence tires
consigned to the light quarries
daytime a hurry of selves going past

a garb of glass
in its vest of lights
a machine of money

and I could be
cast down like him into silence
what's here on the gallery floor

whose glass is
fused sand is
the dust at the heart of an explosion