Reading Gabriel Marcel
On My Seventy-Fourth Birthday

If I reflect upon the facets

      of the cosmos we call life

upon the microcosm and the macrocosm

      and the spaces in between

      where we explore

      those unknown shadowed porticos

      hiding falsehoods made of truth

and the grasp of being

      is almost in the grasp of being

      but never quite

as if to say

      that once we have portrayed ourselves

      as something more than the sun

      glittering on the surface of the water

then we have made a choice

      to be what we may not be

within this hall of mirrors

      that speaks to us in colors

and makes a kind of music

      we are not yet able to hear.