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]