Glossalia

From the lyric poets I have taken love,
The fear of death, and boredom; in heroic verse
I witnessed metered struggle, the fates of men
And states; tragedy taught me that our life
Breaks hearts; from didactic I learned how to fix them:
This is what I know, the subtle art
Of imitations, the Alexandrian flare
For speaking tongues. But what I do not know,
What I have not learned or found
Is myself hidden behind the masks,
And sometimes I wonder whether
Behind the fabric of poetry
I'm saying anything at all --
If, when I take off the accouterments
Of assonance, rhythm, rhetoric and rhyme,
To name just a few, there is anything left,
Anything that I've grasped beforehand
Or brought to be on this page. Ex nihilo, nihil fit:
Perhaps my doubts are making me deeper,
But I feel like I'm becoming void.