Aliki Caloyeras

Before a Mirror
	After Vladislav Khodasevich
	
I, I, I.  How strange a sound.  I.  Am I
really she there–she whom mother loved?
Pallid, graying person with paunch and
slack, sagging skin of breast, arms turned soft
from lack of use, all knowing snake, is I?
	
Where is the girl who danced in halls, upon
tables in summer’s moist outdoor heat–
Could she be I, who now by each of
my words inspire such ire, fear and hate
in a green poet or two at their dawn?
	
Am I that same girl who used to be bent
on throwing herself into midnight
arguments with such fervor–is she
I, who have learned to give up the fight
and treat the tragic with jests or silence?
	
Is this the same place where we all end up
midway through our fatal desert journey?
Traveling on trivial grounds, I,
like all, finally lose my way
beyond those vanished tracks I’ve searched enough.
	
No panther leaps in pursuit of this I
to hold me up in my attic hollow;
There at my shoulder no Virgil stands;
No grandeur here, only I, alone,
framed in this true-tongued mirror of mine.

~~~
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