I, who have felt the horror of mirrors

Not only in front of the impenetrable crystal

Where there ends and begins, uninhabitable,

An impossible space of reflections,

But of gazing even on water that mimics

The other blue in its depth of sky,

That at times gleams back the illusory flight

Of the inverted bird, or that ripples,

And in front of the silent surface

Of subtle ebony whose polish shows

Like a repeating dream the white

Of something marble or something rose,

Today at the tip of so many and perplexing

Wandering ears under the varying moon,

I ask myself what whim of fate

Made me so fearful of a glancing mirror.

Mirrors in metal, and the masked

Mirror of mahogany that in its mist

Of a red twilight hazes

The face that is gazed on as it gazes,

I see them as infinite, elemental

Executors of an ancient pact,

To multiply the world like the act

Of begetting. Sleepless. Bringing doom.

They prolong this hollow, unstable world

In their dizzying spider’s-web;

Sometimes in the afternoon they are blurred

By the breath of a man who is not dead.

The crystal spies on us. If within the four

Walls of a bedroom a mirror stares,

I am no longer alone. There is someone there.

In the dawn reflections mutely stage a show.

Everything happens and nothing is recorded

In these rooms of the looking glass,

Where, magicked into rabbis, we

Now read the books from right to left.

Claudius, king of an afternoon, a dreaming king,

Did not feel it a dream until that day

When an actor shewed the world his crime

In a tableau, silently in mime.

It is strange to dream, and to have mirrors

Where the commonplace, worn-out repertory

Of every day may include the illusory

Profound globe that reflections scheme.

God (I keep thinking) has taken pains

To design that ungraspable architecture

Reared by every dawn from the gleam

Of a mirror, by darkness from a dream.

God has created nighttime, which he arms

With dreams, and mirrors, to make clear

To man he is a reflection and a mere

Vanity. Therefore these alarms.