"I have looked at it so long / I think it is a part of my heart."

[pynelyf]

I've avoided posting Sylvia Plath so I wouldn't look like an emo kid, but you know, I really love this poem. It's my favorite Plath. On a more absurd note, I was commenting to Christina that poets tend to be obsessed with (and I as a reader tend to be enchanted by) all this bird and flight imagery. So, here's a poem about a terrible fish.

Mirror -- 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.