“I am sliver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

whatever I see a swallow immediately

just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike
I am not cruel, only truthful”

A mirror is an object or surface that reflects what is infront of it. In this poem the mirror is
personified and speaks to the reader in first person. We can imagine its voice as monotone and
deadpan.

“The eye of a little god,four-cornered”

A god can be defined as an an object as divine. Most people go infront of a mirror almost
everyday at any time to check their appearance, as if they rely on its judgement like a god.

“Most of the time I mediate 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.”

The mirror has faced the pink wall probably from the first time it was brought. The mirror
sometimes believes that the pink speckled wall is part of it because it has stood still for a long
time but when light shines on the wall, it sparkles and flickers. As time passes,the old woman
will meet and invite people into her home,probably creating a family of her own.The fact that the
mirror is pink and has been pink so long even into the old age of the woman could this be an
attempt by the woman to latch on to something of the past and a semblance of her youth by
keeping the wall in the room that colour. Also seeing that the colour pink is a vibrant colour
associated with youth.

“Now I am a lake”. They say that water has memories, the mirror referring to itself as a lake, a large body
of water that if looked on is usually reflective, it could hold memories, the memories that this woman
holds of the past. “A woman bends over me,//Searching my reaches for what she really is.” The woman is
unable to come to terms with the fact that she is now old , searching for her youth, but the mirror only
reflects what is in front of it and what it sees is an old lady.

She looks to other things to show a different image “Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the
moon.” The candle and the moon can only shed light on what is there and cannot reflect they only show
shadows which are not the actual image which may be why the mirror calls them liars.

We see that the woman is not satisfied with the image that is shown by the mirror , we get the feeling of
melancholy from this stanza. She hates the image she now sees “I see her back, and reflect it
faithfully. //She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.” Seeing her image and her trying it
distort the image or rather her trying desperately to change what she sees.

“I am important to her. She comes and goes.//Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness”
even though the woman hates the image she sees in the mirror she seems reliant on it compelled to look
each day. The mirror has seen her face every day since she was a young woman aging until she now she
is an old woman and now her reflection seems to be something of a crisis or point of hurt for the
woman .”In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman//Rises toward her day after day,
like a terrible fish.”