A Poem

As I previously mentioned, I struggle with reading Plath since I have such a hard time separating her life from her art. Regardless, this is one of the few poems I have always liked as it "reflects" the struggles of so many women with self-image and the passage of time as the voice of the poem is a mirror, talking about the woman who stares into her every day.

"Mirror"

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 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.