Very like a wail

Knowing you for what you are,
An object in the paper mirror,
I still stop – I still stare.
The future and the past are here.
It’s black on white. Your shell’s texture
Speaks of a life under pressure:
A circular

Baren, perhaps, on baking paper;
Ink oiled around the roller.
Your surface, with its vents for air,
Or whatever it was your wise contriver
Intended when he etched them there,
Suggest, I fear, any old area;
So, some time later,

I see the joke: you’re a weird toaster,
Complete with quartet of indicator
Lights that tediously flare
Against a kitchen surface. Yet a
Second glance hints at horrors
Beyond the household scale: a monster,
Speckled where

Your bloody inks give out; a warrior
Deathless at dawn; a dream killer
Masked in a granite fever; or a catcher
Of suicides who raise no murmur
When swept down that abysmal singular
Column of yours. You disappear
Wholly – and still I stare . . .