As Through a Glass Darkly

Mirror, mirror see you all
in sorrow's face here's beauty's flaw …

The looking glass, crazed and tarnished by age, turned to a leaden hue by time and its mirroring of the destruction of Grace … This is what I would wish, that these stark images may convey to a mind whose first concern is human compassion and not the self indulgence of personal bigotry and selfishness.

The mirror image has always intrigued me, even from my early days of perception. It is not entirely surprising that this darkened image of self, this random laterally inverted duplication of all and nothing has held many perceptive and imaginative minds by its silent presence: for the mirror makes no moral judgements, what passes before its cold 'surface interior' is reflected with total indifference.

This is but one layer of interpretation, for the mirror image may also but skin and film the ulcerous place while rank corruption lays within. Shakespeare understands the nature of our nature like no other and well knows that surface and inner image can corrupt. Likewise, if you will, the reflected inversion may hold a greater truth in its dark recesses if we but confront evil, clear eyed and unflinchingly.

Well, for better or worse the artist gives you, the observer, his hard wrought pieces. If you see in these 'reflections' an anguished compassion and sorrowful humanity, then this is following in Christ's work. Look inward and know in their reflection only self rage, the prison of self love, then the Devil has you well and truly by the heels!

Look, there would stand – once modest, chaste
but now, reflected here a face fraught
with the knowledge of man's lust:
his rape that bought my tender trust.

What mother (from her womb) this child
would pay its way with love defiled;
why so? I long to know
how ill could cause such callous show.

What blow to her that she should blame …?
To lay my body there in pain
and use, amuse for moment's gain.

Mirror, mirror see you all
in sorrow's face here's beauties flaw.
A babe in arms I'd rather be
than sold, be harmed for just a fee.

To nestle in her milky breast …
More like my wrestle as his seed infest:
or smothered by a reeking breath
and crushed beneath … is this the best

that life invest, to swell with gall
as does my belly brought to whore?
See there's a child – still borne as child
with child and more.

I stare into this glass:
can it predict when Hell will pass?
Make from its fashion, passion kill:
perhaps it hoards all grief that fill?

Yes, now I see its call:
the dark seen round my heart – a pall,
a burden wove in sable cloth
containing yet my childhood … lost.

Note This poem was read out in Court and accepted as a legitimate work of literature by Judge Cottle.

Happiness thy name is Joy ..
Yes, once – but now the toy:

a ploy that plays their every whim
and feeds my belly full with sin.

Mould in the mirror of Christ's Grace:
look on this fragment of a face.

It was, in truth, without a stain:
now see with ruth my inner pain.

A pale likeness of a child …

Yes, I doubt her life's to thwart to pail the sea.

There, naked standing free of prim attire …
You've never known the back street mire
or whored your body for a crust:
so moan the winter without fire
(except that pyre to lust).

Your figure's straight, well groomed and fed,
mine's crooked by hate, consumed with dread …

No matter, for I'll soon be 'wed'
though never bed 'tween silken thread
or sleep the comfort of a dreamy down:
rags, that's all with which I'm wound.

The gutter's filth's my winding sheet,
this broken heart … they'll sweep
like some dead dog into a drain …
(why was I born, conceived to pain
when fate might mirror your sweet frame)?

I lie as Death, but mere' a shell
yet victim still – the mask of Hell:
whose cohorts wear the traps' of law
and feed upon each anguished sore.

Their maw, it mouths my bitter pain
to bloat the growth whose greed is gain.
Thus ripe into the blights that slake
and so, their fruits, my callous rape.

So hold, then look upon my hollow heart,
of love bereft (your vicious part)
whose mark is but the seal of hate:
I lie with death and death my mate.