"You are very secretive and fearful," she says
For twenty dollars, his mail-order explainer.
"You show no generosity to people
Or to yourself. Try not to be deceitful."
This is not palmistry. What she has read
is something he has written.
Like everyone else he is a man of letters.
He thinks what she has read was written
Decades ago when first he was forming
His characters after the various models
His hand in its cunning
Always succeeded in failing
To be more than a variation on.
Only the J of his John Hancock is John Hancock's.
So he became himself, like everyone.
She has taught him a lesson, his accuser.
All this he had hidden in the open,
Showing everyone no generosity to himself.
Perhaps in the future he will send
Himself only to the printer, who will reform him.
For now, he is trying not to be deceitful.
He is giving himself away. Here. In his own hand.
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by John N. Morris, 1984
