True Lives Poem by Mark Sauer

My true lives are the ones I do not lead;
Not this dull masque between two dates in stone,
But private epics for my self alone
Behind the mask, where forking paths proceed
To high adventures, loves renounced take seed
And bear lost babes whose ghostly names I moan;
The hidden triumphs, the regrets unknown,
That hourly I ponder, kiss, and feed.
God grants to me a thousand lives; one gray,
In common shared, and then the secret swarm
Of vivid truer lonely lives I hide;
And as I watch the passers by each day
I wonder if each faded, huddled form
Is likewise filled with teeming worlds inside.