The death-mask has fixed for centuries features refined                               

      by suffering – the eyelids creased and wrinkled like walnut

      shells with weeping, the lips composed and all but

      smiling beneath the Biscayan beak defined,

      like the gleaming cranium, in plaster – all signed

      from within by the Spirit that had to master this flesh,

      this bone, this husk, now dust of Biscay, while, fresh

      and white, the gypsum mold of the man’s mind-

                                    shell keeps on its surface the calcified record

                                    of noble lineage and the personal history

                                    (Quixotic, paradoxical mystery!)

                                    of this gentleknight’s encounter with the word

                                    made flesh: his spirit defying attempts to fix it

                                    in flesh or plaster, and living on, like Quixote.

                        [Appeared first in America, 1979]