Diked Poems | Examples

Narcissus Laments

I do not like to see my face floating
At the foot of a ewer,
nor in drops of water, nor in the glassy eye
of a slaughtered goat.

I am beautiful, but water and cloudless gems
distort, they are torturers of disfigurement.

Since I saw my reflected beauty
I have been unable to mirror that perfection.
I have ardently endeavored 
to emblazon the beacon of that first time, 
when I, suffused in beams of crystalline air,
beheld my countenance clear
yet now I am caught, caulked, and diked
forever dogged by a stark magicking
from ever parading that delicate radiance,
that inaugural art of my gift,
my exquisite features.

Yet ever my mind’s eye returns
to that translucent and timeless time
that empyreal morn, so fine and fair
where I beheld what I thought was there
and believed upon it.