STATISTIC

My life is a curtained window,
a refraction of light in the mirror,
I am a  flash in a snow-covered field, 
brilliant in brightness,
not a torch in the mist
but in clear daylight.
I am the herald before the king 
in bright silk, overshadowed
and so forgotten.
I am the unidentified face in the album, 
a passport name, a reply in a census,
one more figure in the population statistics,
dead while I am alive,
only alive when dead
until the statistics are changed.

Tom Holt.