Reflection by Anne Goodwin Winslow

When my poor beauty passes to its doom,
I will not let it go through any room
With mirrors nor by any hall
With burnished metal things along the wall,
Nor linger in the forest ways alone
Without some one to throw a stone
In all the pools, and watch them break, and swear
There was no lady leaning there.
I will have done with shining surfaces,
And I will fare
In peace without this cloud of witnesses.

I think if this can be arranged
I will not realize that things have changed;
The ghosts that go
Unchallenged need not ever know
That they are ghosts; and if I never pass
Except by ways made temperate and wise,
With nothing like a looking-glass
To stare and stab, and never gaze too deep
In forest pools where the brown autumn lies
With its lost leaves sleep….
But then what will I do about your eyes?

From Blues for a Melodeon by Phyllis McGinley

This is the house that I knew by heart.
 Everything here seemed sound, immortal.
When did this delicate ruin start?
 How did the moth come?

Naked by daylight, the paint is airing
 Its rags and tatters. There’s dust on the mantel.
And who is that gray-haired stranger staring
 Out of my mirror?