Self-Portrait

This is another poem Kalindi sent me; this one was sent not long before she died...within days actually. In an email she commented, "I love this poem so much it hurts. Finally found the author's name, after wondering and wishing for it for several years now! It was on the beginning of the "Glorious Accident" videotape --- the one of Daniel Dennet. I even went so far as to order the book in hopes it would be printed there, but it was completely cut out. On the tape they played Dennet reading it at the interviewer's request, with background music of Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven" playing on the radio. A very lovely piece of tape."

The rest of the text before the poem is from what she posted:

This, my favorite poem, reminds me of how our world is held together by personal and culturally
shared ideas; scripts, Images, ideologies. Formatting and photograph come courtesy of:
http://homepages.cyberhungary.net/user/poorsaxon/poems.htm



Kalindi Smith
~~~



SELF-PORTRAIT


My friend, you who claim to know me,
look round my room: nothing of its decoration
was my own choosing; open my wardrobe:
it has nothing to show you that is specially me.


My lover and my dog know how I caress them,
but I remain unknown to them. My old instrument
is well aware of my hand's contours;
it too cannot sing about me.


Yet I am not in hiding - simply, I do not exist.
I act, I suffer, as all men do,
but my essential core is non-existence itself.


My friend, you must not regard me as having secrets.
I am as transparent as glass - how then
do you imagine you can really see me?


--- Sándor Weöres