Time

A mirror is standing on a silver thread
It glides backwards in front of us.
All it shows is what's here, and what's gone.

You reach out for the mirror,
You wish for a peek
behind the silver screen.
Can the glass turn to mercury?

A slim fog veils the surface,
Memory morphs reality.
From the veil emerge a thousand stories,
A thousand faces are blurred.

The mirror keeps receding
It will only reflect the past and now
The now that passes
with every backward step the mirror takes.

On the other side, hushed hurried steps,
for the mirror is arriving,and soon,
that future on the silver thread
will be revealed to now, and then past.

The same breathless anticipation,
the same apprehensions lie
on both sides of the mirror.
And it glides, impassive, deceptively passive.

22 March 2005