under the glass

...In the morning the mirror is consulted again,'
said Doctor Johnson, but
not of this one dumped in the back of a Peugeot truck:

it is left, one corner broken off, among the riven architraves,
and won't be consulted again.
It is in with the ripped out sinks, the sofa springs' dying octaves,

it is with the builder's rubble that is valueless.
Now that its silver leaf is
peeling off, it is pond water with gleams beneath the surface.

There is a frogspawn of rust-spots. Black stipple on mercury.
There is a cloudiness
of depth and current, scratched by teeth beneath the glass

but bright enough for provincial eaves and firs to crane
over - for the first glimpse.
The mirror is put out. It will not be consulted again.

First, there is the misplacement - a veiled indoor convenience
must cope will all that light.
It reflects a worm's eye view of what will soon evaporate:

the passers-by with collars up for whom spring broke
too early, knock wet
turgid blossom onto it - equally misplaced where breeze-blocks sit,

as incongruous as the fractured seventy eight
of Beethoven's Fifth
dumped in the stingers - where nature and something else conflate.

Second, there's the passivity - the mirror tilted as it is
reflects every detail
of onrushing sky - the gulfs of blue and weightless cumulus

that drift like floes, that billow, fly, and break apart.
And so I think this bit
of junk's not just the still reflecting point of art

but may be likened to a certain juncture in
the history of clouds,
at which formations such as these might part to glimpse

maelstroms both human and equine, far below,
and which will yet
tear softly apart, to show the goings on of god knows what.

Lastly, there are the soft concealments - the mirror invokes
the droplets
of wet that steamed off with the last to smile in it:

the youthful nurse's theatre of unwitnessed face,
the couple who
moved in and out of it some twenty times a day.

Now all that consults it is sky. Soon, it will go
to the council dump,
but here finds cloud after cloud moving slow

though its skin of liver-spots is utterly still,
under the glass of which pours this
bright moving floor or conveyor belt, freckle-faced.

---Tim Liardet.

~~~

Under the glass, behind the mirror, the words not spoken, clearing, rising, breaking the still surface of our lives. Time reverses in the evening mirror. A dim round light above it, a fading yellow haze, helps bring back something of the past. The lines on your face, like those etched in blood by a tribal, to mark the passage of time, the forward rush to dying silver.