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 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.


 



