a collection of my favourite poems

Mirror (Sylvia Plath)

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 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