Thursday, June 16, 2011

Mirror

Another of my favorite poems, by Sylvia Plath.
p.s. sorry I suck at posting. And I also think I might start posting actual posts instead of just stuff like this. Stay tuned.

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. 

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Her Dilemma

Another of my favorite poems. And my favorite authors.

THE TWO were silent in a sunless church,
  Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,
And wasted carvings passed antique research;
  And nothing broke the clock’s dull monotones.

Leaning against a wormy poppy-head,        5
  So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand,
—For he was soon to die,—he softly said,
  “Tell me you love me!”—holding hard her hand.

She would have given a world to breathe “yes” truly,
  So much his life seemed hanging on her mind,        10
And hence she lied, her heart persuaded throughly,
  ’Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind.

But the sad need thereof, his nearing death,
  So mocked humanity that she shamed to prize
A world conditioned thus, or care for breath        15
  Where Nature such dilemmas could devise.


                                                                                                   -Thomas Hardy