Mirror

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.

Sylvia Plath