Vanity

Vanity on its journey
to take heart forges
a reproachment with
emptiness, disciplining
alternation by taking
footsteps wo where they
have come from. In night
it hides even from
the fireflies and refuses
to recognize sleep
as a refuge from
its conscious lies. Things
must never be stirred up
if one is seeking the stagnate
reality of praise. Rise
to face the day's hunger,
trotting out that little path
between where you have been
before and where you will go
again.


[from Gabriele Frasca]
August 25, 1998