Interview with the Mirror

Interview with the Mirror

Interviewer:  What has become of your face?
Mirror:  It is like the moon; it has 28 phases.

Interviewer:  When did those eyes become blanks?
Mirror:  Oh, when is not important. 
The question is, are they blank enough.

Interviewer:  Where does that sallow skin come from?
Mirror:  From deep inside where sallow is mixed 
with saffron and clumps of leaves are torn from shadow boxes with fennel pollen.

Interviewer:  Why fennel pollen?
Mirror:  Why fennel pollen, indeed!  Better than mace 
and thyme, more elaborate than a whistle, sweet, spice, electric . . . 

Interviewer:  Why does your mouth obey those
 loose-hinged jaws? 
Mirror:  It was never one to disobey.  In the radical
 morning, scruffs of necks seek to burn, and limber 
goths slink back to the swamp.

Interviewer:  How will your heart explain to your brain 
that it has shattered itself again over the sharp rocks of indulgence?
Mirror:  Now, I am a small pool of crystal water that 
rushed down from the Himalayas to gather fools 
who have no right to breathe the temperate air of Maya, 
yet  . . . they travel on.