Sunday, October 12, 2008

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 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

Morbid yet beautiful.

4 comments:

Ashwin Prabhakaran said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ashwin Prabhakaran said...

I remember reading this poem a very long time ago..
Its interesting to note that Sylvia Plath wrote this poem when she was very young..

I love the lines:-
"Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall."
"I see her back, and reflect it faithfully
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands."

The Purple Bicycle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Purple Bicycle said...

She captures raw human emotion beautifully in the poem. Been trying to get my hands on Penguin's collection of her poems. No stock anywhere! :(