GuiltyPleasure
AWTSS
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2003
- Posts
- 14,131
Gary Hyland, born in 1940, died on April 5 having lived with ALS since 2007. He is one of my favourite modern poets. He will be missed.
REFLECTIONS: THE LOVE OF MIRRORS
Gary Hyland from The Work of Snow
They say the mirror in Elvis Presley's bathroom
never forgot him, that men looking in
see a piece of Elvis looking back. They say
Dali painted a nude self-portrait on the wall
opposite his so it would not be lonely,
and that years after Peter Sellers died
his could be heard doing impersonations
in accents at night. The day Indira Gandi
was slain tears dribbled down her glass.
In Frida Kahlo's: a v of crow's wings.
In the way of mirrors, yours watches you try
expressions, check your tongue, your degrees
of modesty. It sees your blemishes, your secrets
and never whispers them. As you settle down
your mirror accepts those deepening lines,
the thinner greying hair, the sagging parts.
It does not pretend, compare, resist the light.
No one ever loves you like your mirror, not
your lover, nor your mother, not even you
in any of the versions trapped in its layers.
The time will come when you will not be
in your mirror. Patiently the glass will wait
for you to wash and brush your teeth,
for the graze of your self-regarding eyes,
but you will not appear. Each day it will retain
less and less in the silver cells of its memory.
And soon someone new will stand before it
and the mirror, charmed by a leaner body
that requires less reflective energy, will try
again to find a lustre thin enough for myth.
REFLECTIONS: THE LOVE OF MIRRORS
Gary Hyland from The Work of Snow
They say the mirror in Elvis Presley's bathroom
never forgot him, that men looking in
see a piece of Elvis looking back. They say
Dali painted a nude self-portrait on the wall
opposite his so it would not be lonely,
and that years after Peter Sellers died
his could be heard doing impersonations
in accents at night. The day Indira Gandi
was slain tears dribbled down her glass.
In Frida Kahlo's: a v of crow's wings.
In the way of mirrors, yours watches you try
expressions, check your tongue, your degrees
of modesty. It sees your blemishes, your secrets
and never whispers them. As you settle down
your mirror accepts those deepening lines,
the thinner greying hair, the sagging parts.
It does not pretend, compare, resist the light.
No one ever loves you like your mirror, not
your lover, nor your mother, not even you
in any of the versions trapped in its layers.
The time will come when you will not be
in your mirror. Patiently the glass will wait
for you to wash and brush your teeth,
for the graze of your self-regarding eyes,
but you will not appear. Each day it will retain
less and less in the silver cells of its memory.
And soon someone new will stand before it
and the mirror, charmed by a leaner body
that requires less reflective energy, will try
again to find a lustre thin enough for myth.
