Tuesday, July 26, 2016

O Magic Mirror on the Wall, Deliver Us from This World's Thrall

Martin Seay

I recently came across this old poem of mine from the mid-1980s and wondered if two of the main characters in Martin Seay's novel The Mirror Thief - Stanley Glass and Vettor Crivano - would suspect a secret message within:
Souvenirs
You look upon the world with antique eyes,
through intense lens, with more than innocence,
but only in this moment circumscribed
by shelves and shelves of other people's lives.
Let's peer into this mirror, you and I,
clear through the old and darkened glass. What past
perhaps reflects obscurely back on one
behind the silver-surfaced other side,
who gazes here with solemn, antique eyes?
Maybe it holds the answer to their question, the object of their quest, the conjunction in their que. But probably none of these. The poem's only about a moment in San Francisco when a friend and I were looking through shelves of items in an antique store, and my friend tried on a pair of old glasses and gazed into a nearby antique mirror.

I stood back in appreciation and watched her looking at her antique self, and this poem came to me . . .

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4 Comments:

At 10:59 AM, Blogger Carter Kaplan said...

"...my friend tried on a pair of old glasses and gazed into a nearby antique mirror."

This might serve as a point of departure for another poem, but more directly/overtly reflecting this image.

 
At 1:09 PM, Blogger Kevin Kim said...

This poem would work well as rap lyrics. No joke: I can easily imagine this being recited in rap style.

 
At 3:15 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

I fear I'd be trying too hard if I attempted another poem.

Jeffery Hodges

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At 3:16 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Rap it, Kevin!

Jeffery Hodges

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