THE TRAP

Mandarins thought that any five-doored room
would call a ghost; or many; and they built
no such a gin useless they knew for whom
(nets random-cast may catch us our own guilt,
or a sea-monster.  Only fool or mage
blindly constructs what is both lure and cage).

My pentacle of senses, it well knows,
and not with terror, is inhabited:
from door to door the single spectre goes,
finding no issue, because not yet dead.

It was not I who pierced the walls, or locked
(inside or out?) the spells that brought me her
- that brought her me: for the design is mocked;
the seeming prison is the prisoner.