Words for the Chisel (collection)/Mirror

by Genevieve Taggard

For works with similar titles, see Mirror.

Mirror

A young girl saw in a mirror-glass
The sun like a spot of smitten brass;
She saw three lines of black birds pass;
A crooked tree, a curly cloud;
A new-mown field and a country road,—
These the silver mirror showed.

And when the novice gazed again
She saw Orion pure and plain;
The moon rode in and ploughed a lane
Of noiseless silver in the glass;
A black hour—then: the spot of brass,—
Back whence they flew, the beaked birds pass. . . .

And this is all she saw for years
Unless you add her silly tears,
Her own peaked face where her own face peers;

Unless you want to count her own
Blue eyes she neared and pondered on
And closed and opened all alone.

Until one day it seemed that down,
The vacant road of ribbon-brown
She saw a mortal figure blown.
It shaped and strode and was a man
Naked and negligent and tan,
With animal loveliness it ran. . . .

Running too large, too light and tall—
The torso flashed, a living wall,
Slim hips, belly panting,—all
Blurred in a loop of silver smoke,
Cleared, then with a quiet stroke
Crash!—the crystal mirror broke!