Well I just discovered this great poem, thanks to a tip from an alert reader, but I don’t know anything about the author. Which is OK–I’m just gonna leave that section blank and let others fill in if they want to. You don’t have to be an expert: Any jag can do the Google and then say, Ah yes, I remember first hearing Ann Deagon read from her work at an exclusive reading in a chateau outside Prague, an affair which was actually catered by Roger Waters. She was born…” Seriously, enlighten me, and lie if necessary.
Anyway I really dug this one with its lyric shape and sound and allusions, where vision–a mirror–refracts the speaker’s POV on a relationship, displacing her from her rather quotidian surroundings. -ed.
IN CAMERA OBSCURA
To often lately
my eyes have strayed
across the beveled mirror that reflects
our bedding
to the prismatic edge
where an un-world of color, clashing in planes
kaleidoscopes into a rage of light
the subdued furnishings of our ten years.
What message shall I leave
walking out of our mirror, out of your life?
I do not have illusions. I know
now here is forever framed in nowhere,
movement is an illusion of stopped frames
and all loves out of focus.
We have seen each other through a glass darkly;
I do not expect to see anyone more clear.
I leave this room, love,
only to walk a little in the sun
wear green while my season lasts
and then take on
the kaleidoscopic colors of decay.
-1974
