Howard Firkin
Accept for fourteen lines the proposition:
you don’t exist. It clarifies a few
things, brings your likely future state in view,
explains your strange, untenable condition:
the more you do, the less effect you make.
You speculate, but don’t know what was meant,
a migratory bird who turned up late
and thinking it was early, chose to wait—
you’ll winter where the snow sets like cement;
your path now clear—the one you will not take.

Not ending as you don’t begin: not son,
not father, wholly ghost; you see
time stand, twin mirrors either side of one
point in a line of blank infinity.