HENRY JAMES' MIRROR

In the looking glass
at your fine sensibility
not foiled by time
yet understanding
the class and place
of your ancestors landings'
worth in history,
your literary gifts emerge
in your adolescence
not soiled by any cast
of a gentleman's reward
or coiled in enigmas
since you live
in the presence of art
knowing your task
Henry James
is to play your part
to remove the masks
that hide our faces
with splendid sentences
for wondrous fiction
others may call long- winded
in your diction
provoking our shame
that we should ask you
if we are under conviction
by your cultivated romances,
that we had our chance
to succeed in our lives
you proceed at last
to lift through waiting
on any arbitrary doors
with the liberty of language
in your novel ability
to explore the past
to take chances
with every variety
of convention in society
forsaking any mold
with the intervention
of telling a story
not putting on hold
the reality of being told
what to record
by an expatriate
who saw the loss
of an aristocracy
for the moneyed
calculation in democracy
using the swords of irony
on a rising bourgeoisie
creating a new destiny,
you will dramatize
our Anglo-American fate
as you leave the States
of your nation,
to serve solely the mind
of your imagination.