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:
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
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.
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.
I haven't read Sylvia. Her poem shows such truth in the mirror.
Yeah, I'm with a couple here . . . can't take much of Sylvia Plath.
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
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.
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