The morning mirror shows a face
That looks familiar, but I recoil.
I must have met that man somewhere, some-when.
But how disheveled, how gaunt, how glum.
I’m glad it may be someone else.
Mirrors must distort, they are not
Portrait painters like van Gogh or Gainsborough,
Nor are they candid cameras or CCTV gadgets
To arrest the pilfering mind behind the hand.
Pardon perspective, but the left is right for those who know.
Cell by cell I grow different from every scene,
By the nano-second, if you can reckon it.
All things change, organic or chemical or
In the mystery of ideation, the faculty we have
To call up images and ratify our life-world.
Go call up a raga or an overture,
Re-read Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’,
Or for preference a bronze of Nataraja,
In a cosmic dance, lofting the left leg
Eternally, or the small painting by Edvard Munch:
A man on a bridge near a fjord, blocking his ears
To a scream audible to those of us who care to hear it.
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