1I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.

2Whatever I see I swallow immediately

3Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

4I am not cruel, only truthful‚

5The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

6Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

7It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

8I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.

9Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

10Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

11Searching my reaches for what she really is.

12Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

13I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.

14She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

15I am important to her. She comes and goes.

16Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

17In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

18Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.