‘looks Familiar, But’ Poem by Ananta Madhavan

‘looks Familiar, But’



The morning mirror shows a face
That looks familiar, but I recoil.
I must have met that man somewhere, some-when.
But how dishevelled, how gaunt, how glum.
I’m glad it may be someone else.


Mirrors must distort, they are not
Portrait painters like van Gogh or Gainsborough,
Nor are they candid cameras or CCTV gadgets
To arrest the pilfering mind behind the hand.
Pardon perspective, but left is right for those who know.


Cell by cell I grow different with every scene,
By the nano-second, if you can reckon it.
All things change, organic or chemical or
In the mystery of ideation, the faculty we have
To call up images and ratify our life-world.


Go call up a raga or an overture,
Re-read Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’,
Or for preference a bronze of Nataraja,
In a cosmic dance, lofting the left leg
Eternally, or the small painting by Edvard Munch:
A man on a bridge near a fjord, blocking his ears
To a scream audible to those of us who care to hear it.



- - - - - -
April 2015

Thursday, April 9, 2015
Topic(s) of this poem: mirror
POET'S NOTES ABOUT THE POEM
Art and music are my vehicles of recovery.
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
A. Madhavan 16 June 2017

Submitted to Poem-Hunter two years ago. If this feeling is part of a reader's experience, I would be glad to know it. 3/5 rating for me. AM

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