Mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you 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 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.
--Sylvia Plath
I came across this poem today when I opened my copy of 'Alice in Wonderland' and found it tucked inside. I suppose at the time I thought it was an appropriate bookmark, as I was only just about to start 'Through the Looking-glass.'
Oddly enough, I found this picture of myself soon thereafter and my mind jumped immediately back to the poem. Those moments are always lovely, when your brain connects two unrelated things.
Plath's subjects were often the most banal things in life; in this instance a mirror. Somehow, she brings life and interest to things most would overlook. Mirrors, and poetry, are so very revealing. I love the line, "...unmisted by love or dislike/I am not cruel, only truthful--/the eye of a little god, four-cornered." It's so plain and straightforward and true.
Poetry is so lovely and terrible.
Love and tons o' Diet Pepsi--
Luna
P.S. -- Find all of Plath's poetry at http://www.stanford.edu/class/engl187/docs/plathpoem.html
