An Orchid in the Mirror
The doubling of the orchid
is a calamitous irony.
"Damned by the mirror that reflects you"
wrote Ronsard,
watering the eye rather than the image,
turning its back on the other
with its back turned to it.
Take the mirror in your arms
like a woman, like squinting envy,
with the orchid like a decoy
over the abyss
of your multiplied life.
The orchid can irritate you
back home again
where this equals something else
and not that
May 26, 2004.
This poem is one of the fifty making up The Orchid Book, a small handmade volume of my orchid poems with drawings and water colours by my soon-to-be wife, Malgorzata. It was made the year after we met--in 2004.
