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To Charles Ardinger's previous piece

Self-Portrait by Hearsay

Here's a pyramid of mirrors to read:
                                    the prophet
sings like a metronome again, again,
again like an echo:  here's another echo
to read like a mystic aura:
                           practice melting
as religion; memorize gibberish; write
confessions to please the man's rhythm in
black ink on a red page:
                        here's a hard feeling to read:
                        here's an abstraction
again like an echo like a metronome rapt
in its reflection:  here's a puzzle from a foreign correspondent:
read with toast and bacon Sundays before
                                        my sermon:
                                        here's my sermon:
my name is like a song on the radio, then a clever phrase, then
     a phantom, then a compound sentence:
here's one, and there's another:  all things look pretty
much the same from inside, but
                              preaching's repetition
is my anchor like a metronome to hear
the whole parliament of pictures of echoes of me
at spiral high mass at absolute
ground zero right
                 here.

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