Spooks

I am a man,
A corpse that speaks.
Well I know the properties of fear,
The mortal meanings throwing shadows on the wall.
This is the land of doubles,
The mirror-maelstrom.
History’s ciphers are mine to employ,
Not always for utter good.
Be as vigilant as you like
To distinguish truth from lie,
But the task will undo you.
How much of me is knowledge, how much instinct,
I cannot say;
By devious twists and violations
I serve the state.
The just and the unjust are one blood.
Why is it that I love only the invisible and the hidden,
That nothing else can thrill me?
Polyglot reality tries out disguises,
Tricky to a fault,
Relishing the chase.
Dying is easy,
But how hard it is to dispose of one’s own body.
And memories, of course, are as bad as bloodstains.
Murders and intrigues we shall call by other names,
Deploying words as engines of war,
Fabulously matter-of-fact.
Be sure, it does not end here,
No, it never ends,
Not as long as desire persists.
Consider this life neither real nor fake,
But something in between.
Wounds are precious,
And what they portend I may in time divine;
I act to postpone my own death,
Hastening others, if I must, to theirs.
Mathematical probabilities hedge me in,
As I wager my way by hazard;
Soon enough the bill will arrive,
The punishment will be delivered.
What I know is so little, so unreliable,
Queer phantasms in the head,
Guilty wishes cloaked as facts.
It is all just whispers in the dark.
Marked faces foreshadow destiny,
Gestures and silhouettes accumulate
And the time comes for another disappearance;
For all the doctors’ boasts, I know
Afflictions which can never be cured,
And syndromes still unnnamed.