The Master Thief

"Since you boast of being a master thief, I shall put your skill to the test. If you fail, you'll have to marry the ropemaker's daughter, and croaking ravens will make music at your wedding.' "Count,' said the master thief, "think up three exploits, the harder the better, and if I fail to perform them, do what you like to me.'
What I want, compulsively, is
the impossible: to become what I am not;
to pluck and finger the unattainable.
With a frequency alarming even
to myself, I get what I want. To this end,
I use disguise — though a lover of candour;
compute outcomes like a miser — while
ever an excited servant of fate's whims.
Intimate worlds I spy on from afar
seduce me with their glittering details.
My home is a mansion screened by elms;
water lilies close and bloom on a lake
now quicksilver, now dustily opaque.
The front door stays unlocked — you could enter
and apprise my secrets, had you the nerve.
It's my pleasure to make things difficult
for myself, with each theft the effortless
final act in an epic fantasy.
I care nothing for what I steal, and hunger
to give it up — to lose it back in life,
place it in needy hands. What I am is
a writer-director, creating
scenarios of mayhem — luring soldiers
to drugged sleep so as to swipe the king's horse;
unmarrying the king's wife by taking
bedsheet and ring before her very eyes;
making the dead parade through a graveyard…
All to win a bet, cheat my alter ego
of my death! I'm an actor, too — I can be
crone, king, corpse or doomsday preacher:
as if I were unpacking boxes
inside myself — each more dangerous than
the last, the lids begging to be lifted.
I most love robbing others of their
voices, accustomed selves, their entrenchment
in dailiness, or the sleep of power.
What demons set me on this course? As I've
explained with benign insight to my parents,
(I'm also a psychologist) — the tree
that I am, lacking guidance, grew crooked;
and there were stones among its starving roots,
a bitter wind blew without mercy: yes,
there were a thousand reasons why I angled
myself askew to heaven. By tonight's
full moon, that tree shadow on the wall
is chaste and straight — if, as I smoke this
rare cigarillo and sip this fabled
burgundy, I tilt my head leftwards
then refocus my vision… Later,
the tree's clawed branches will hold the moon —
will steal that too, before setting it free.
For this brief time, dry limbs will bear strange flowers —
cyclamen firebirds; lotuses furled
like silver candles against midnight-gold:
as if all the world's images could beg
and borrow from each other…
At first light,
I'll visit the Count in tight-lipped triumph.
We'll converse as equals, shake hands civilly —
he'll have no choice but to let me go.
Then I'll quit his precinct: and that will be that!