Post Larvam

The persona is so carefully made

Sculpted and painted to please other eyes

By each of us, a role is deftly played

The finest actor old logic defies

After all, we tend to infer at once

That behind the mask, an authentic self

Is lurking, for which the probing eye hunts

But nothing hides like the thing-in-itself

To deceive, the pretender must not seem

But be the other, thus make fiction real

To speak and act awake, as if in dream

To joke and smile when one wishes to scream

Now and then, the pretender is revealed

By the same mind that kept acting concealed