The Mirror - By Sylvia Plath
MirrorI am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you 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 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
This one really strikes a chord - I find "I am not cruel, only truthful" very interesting. Kindness and Honesty are strange bedfellows. 100% truthful is always cruel at some point of time of the other, right?
Labels: Poetry
posted by Aish @ 5:11 PM
6 Comments:
Hi!
I thought this was your work till at the end i read Sylvia Plath. The mirrior is always revealing...one thing or the other, doesn't it?
Jist changed the title! Reminds me of the time I took a session for a bunch of college kids aspiring for CAT. Was getting so much respect- thought it was my astounding personality. Turns out it was my brother-in-law's IIT Delhi Tshirt. Very embarassing :(.
I dont know about the revealing, though- doesn't it often show only what we want to see?
Plath used to be called a clinical poet in our college days. She was always depressed it seemed, but a beautiful poet nevertheless.
:)
Please get hold of the movie Sylvia. Philistine that I am, I read her poems after watching Ms Paltrow enact her life out...
I guess I can sense the "clinicality" (is there a word?). She seems so dispassionate, doesnt she? Havent read too much of Plath, though. And my college reading was woefully inadequate, atleast as far as Poetry was concerned. I can hardly imagine my prudish, 60+, forever-sleepy Prof talking about Plath! :(
Sud, will try and get hold of the book, if possible. Not sure abt the movie, though. Never seem to have the time
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