Monday, January 19, 2009

MIRROR (a poem by Sylvia Plath)

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 the 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 a 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..."

SB