Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Mirror

“Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror or the painter?” — Pablo Picasso

“All things that pass / Are wisdom’s looking glass.” — Christina Rossetti

“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.”—George Bernard Shaw

“There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster;’ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.” — Noam Chomsky

           Midweek Motif ~Mirror 

A Mirror reflects. Does it tell us who we are?

Does it show appearance or reality?

What do you see or want to see when you look in the mirror?

What else do you think might work as a mirror too?

Mirror is our motif today. You might also write your lines from the perspective of a mirror.

Mirror

by Sylvia Plath

I 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.

The Other Side Of A Mirror

by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

I sat before my glass one day, 

And conjured up a vision bare, 

Unlike the aspects glad and gay, 

That erst were found reflected there - 

The vision of a woman, wild 

With more than womanly despair.
 

Her hair stood back on either side 

A face bereft of loveliness.
 

It had no envy now to hide 

What once no man on earth could guess.
 

It formed the thorny aureole 

Of hard, unsanctified distress.
 

Her lips were open - not a sound 

Came though the parted lines of red, 

Whate'er it was, the hideous wound 

In silence and secret bled.
 

No sigh relieved her speechless woe, 

She had no voice to speak her dread.

And in her lurid eyes there shone 

The dying flame of life's desire, 

Made mad because its hope was gone, 

And kindled at the leaping fire 

Of jealousy and fierce revenge, 

And strength that could not change nor tire.

Shade of a shadow in the glass, 

O set the crystal surface free! 

Pass - as the fairer visions pass - 

Nor ever more return, to be 

The ghost of a distracted hour, 

That heard me whisper: - 'I am she!'

Mirror, Mirror

by Spike Milligan

A young spring-tender girl

combed her joyous hair

'You are very ugly' said the mirror.

But,

on her lips hung

a smile of dove-secret loveliness,

for only that morning had not

the blind boy said,

'You are beautiful’?

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

               

                       (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Gender)