Mirror

I grow old under an intensityOf questioning looks. Nonsense,I try to say, I cannot teach you childrenHow to live.–If not you, who will?Cries one of them aloud, grasping my gildedFrame till the world sways. If not you, who will?Between their visits the table, its arrangementOf Bible, fern and Paisley, all past change,Does very nicely. If ever I feel curiousAs to what others endure,Across the parlor you provide examples,Wide open, sunny, of everything I amNot. You embrace a whole world without once caringTo set it in order. That takes thought. Out thereSomething is being picked. The red-and-white bandannasGo to my heart. A fine young manRides by on horseback. Now the door shuts. HesterConfides in me her first unhappiness.This much, you see, would never have been fittedTogether, but for me. Why then is itThey more and more neglect me? Late one sleeplessMidsummer night I strained to keepFive tapers from your breathing. No, the widowedCousin said, let them go out. I did.The room brimmed with gray sound, all the instreamingMuslin of your dream …Years later now, two of the grown grandchildrenSit with novels face-down on the sill,Content to muse upon your tall transparence,Your clouds, brown fields, persimmon farAnd cypress near. One speaks. How superficialAppearances are! Since then, as if a fishHad broken the perfect silver of my reflectiveness,I have lapses. I suspectLooks from behind, where nothing is, cool gazesThrough the blind flaws of my mind. As days,As decades lengthen, this visionSpreads and blackens. I do not know whose it is,But I think it watches for my last silverTo blister, flake, float leaf by life, each milling-Downward dumb conceit, to a standstillFrom which not even you strike any brilliantChord in me, and to a faceless will,Echo of mine, I am amenable.