The Masque of Inward Glass

What counterfeit doth greet the mornings eye

What practiced smile what measured tone of voice

We dress ourselves in half-truths and thereby

Present a puppet play but not by choice

The world demands a figure smooth and whole

No cracks nor shadow nor unseemly seam

So, we compose a palatable role

And bury what we are beneath what seem

Yet in the mirrors silvery current of sound

Another visage rises strange and true

The self that wakes when day has lost its breath

The thoughts that dare not venture into view

Here lives the fear we dare not say aloud

The rage we have learned to swallow and disguise

The longing that we have hidden in a shroud

Of pleasantries and diplomatic lies

Each mask we wear a fortress and a cage

It shields us from the cruelty of sight

But bars us too from loves unguarded stage

Where souls might touch in nakedness and light

We learn so young to hide what makes us weak

To armor up to calculate to pose

And soon the truth becomes too strange to speak

A foreign tongue that no familiar knows

But sometimes in a moment undefended

A laugh that leaps before the mind can catch

A tear that falls where pride has not attended

A word that slips through protocols locked latch

The hidden self-breaks through the painted mask

And stands there raw and trembling in the air

And though we rush to reconstruct the tale

That glimpse remains the truth was briefly there

Perhaps the deepest courage is to show

The face beneath the face we've learned to wear

To let another see what lies below

The surface of our carefully combed care

For in that risk to be beheld to be known

To drop the mask and stand in naked light

We find we are not monstrous not alone

But human flawed and finally held tight

So, ask me not what mask I show the world

But ask what mask I hide behind my own

What banner secret in my heart stays furled

What self I am when I am most alone

For there in that unwitnessed private place

Lives the truest mirror of my grace