MIRROR
I am silver and exact. I have no
preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or
dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful ‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the
opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked
at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it
flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and
over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really
is.
Then she turns to those liars, the
candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it
faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an
agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and
goes.
Each morning it is her face that
replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and
in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a
terrible fish.
Silvia Plath.
