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. 

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