The Mirror

The mirror handing on the wall,
where I sometimes see myself in passing…
is a dead pond brought
into the house.
Corpse of a pond is the mirror:
still, rigid water containing
in itself remnants of color,
remembrances
of the sun, of shadow…—movable
edges of the horizon burning, passing by
in circles, returning, never
burning up…—vague
reminiscence that coalesced in the glass
and cannot return to the distant
land from where the pond was tore up,
still white
of moon and jasmine, still trembling
of rain and birds, its waters…
This is water tamed by death:
it's a ghost
of a living water that shined one day,
free in the world, lukewarm, suntanned…
Open to the happy wind that
made her dance…! The water doesn't dance
anymore; it will not reflect
the suns of each day. It is barely reached
by the withered ray filtered through
the window.
In what cold did they freeze you for so long,
vertical pond, no longer spilling
your stream over the carpet, no longer
emptying your remote landscapes
in the living room and your spectral
light? Gray, crystallized water,
my mirror, where I saw myself
so distant
some times, where I feared being kept
inside forever… Detached
from myself, lost in the mud
of ash made of limbering starts…

—Translated by Ilan Stavans