Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Masks

Golden masks excavated in Kalmakareh, Lorestan, Iran.

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” 

― Nathaniel Hawthorne

“I believe in my mask-- The man I made up is me

 I believe in my dance-- And my destiny” 

― Sam Shepard

“A mask tells us more than a face.” 

― Oscar Wilde

Three pictures of the same female noh mask 

Midweek Motif ~ Masks

Masks. Can't live with them and can't live without them! And in addition to our personal masks, there are also cultural and ritual masks that are precious to the faithful and also to collectors.

Can we tell when someone is undisguised? 

Do we prefer people to maintain the mask?

Your Challenge: In a new poem,
unmask a mask, reveal its use and properties, or tell its story.

Masks from Many Cultures - Screener

We Wear the Mask 

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

Maya Angelou, We Wear The Mask

The Poem as Mask
by Muriel Rukeyser




Orpheus

When I wrote of the women in their dances and 
      wildness, it was a mask,
on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone
      down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from
      myself.
   
There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory
of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued
      child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from the great eyes.

No more masks! No more mythologies!

Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,
the fragments join in me with their own music.








Source
Source
WWI Gas Masks



Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—




(Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~ Finding a Sanctuary.)