en el espejo pinta
un paisaje más dulce que el paisaje,
un adiós más eterno que el del día
Juan Ramón Jiménez
After she hung that mirror in the hall
the world was changed forever.
It wasn’t just reveal; there was a far
white distance at the corner of the glass,
a thousand miles of tundra, just beyond
the climbing roses twined around her door.
Whenever we went to visit, I was the one
who ventured out over the snow, in a havering wind,
to name the flora there, my only point
of reference a childhood I had lost
on purpose, and such Bible litanies
as anyone remembers;
nothing but stunted willows, clumps of birch,
a scatter of Arctic
poppies, miniature
as any signal is, Druidic greens
and greys I’d only learn to recognise
by being lost.
If only the body offered such
taxonomies: a name for every shade
of fever, or those dark interiors
where snow has passed beyond
the picturesque, those first flakes in the dusk
become a months-long standstill, shapes and sounds
that made me think
of furnace, every scent
a symptom, sweet
urea in the creases of my palms,
cloves at the back of my throat
like a cherished tumour.
After she died, I watched my favourite uncle
lower the glass from the wall and set it down
so all it could reflect was polished wood
and lino, though the soul it had beguiled
kept walking into blizzard, dumb to grief,
and nothing he could track to bring him home.