Sunday, May 20, 2012

Sunday Morning Poetry

Mirror
I am silver and exact.  I have no preconceptions.
Whatever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cures, 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

7 comments:

Auntie sezzzzzz... said...

I finished, with a shudder...

Don't think I could bear to read much of Sylvia Plath. Poor lady...

“If people are good only because they fear punishment,
and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

~Albert Einstein

keishua said...

plath is not for the faint of heart. i agree it takes a lot out of you to read her but it's worth it. beautiful share.

Jeanie said...

I was thinking today how I longed to be at the lake. It's such a safe, beautiful place for mourning and a spot for healing.

Oh, dear Sylvia -- what a sad life and what a legacy of beautiful words she gave us.

Marilyn Miller said...

I haven't read Sylvia. Her poem shows such truth in the mirror.

Amy said...

Yeah, I'm with a couple here . . . can't take much of Sylvia Plath.

Suz said...

every line a razor cut to her truth
I cannot dwell with her often
but wpnder what she was capable of writing if she was whole
so great her talent

HKatz said...

Those last lines especially are powerful.

I wish for people (and for myself) the strength to get older gracefully. That we won't look in the mirror and see a "terrible fish" but something we can love and accept.

Oldies, but Goodies