The Poem

Mirror 

Mirror 


For years now

The mirror has been

Your unpaid gigolo

Unobtrusive, discreet

Tolerating your

Husband, children

Making no demands

Or envisaging a

Ten years war

Or resorting to 

Sly subterfuge

In shape of swan

But in secret hour

Between hawker's cry

And sluicing of

.Greasy plates in sink 

Your breath spreads

Mist over mirror

It does not recoil 

Or fumble at foreplay

But voluptuously celebrates

Your afternoon tryst

Sibilant whispers

Of endearments

Mouthed by callow youths

Under dim Streetlights

Of evening two decades ago

Rebound to you

Blur the present

Even then the mirror

Assures that you look

Beautiful

Ravaged by sorrow

A husband, children

And your thirty five years