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 overme, / 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