MIRROR

By Sylvia Plath

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.

#darkpoetsclub