In The Keyhole Of Despair – [Poem]

You found yourself looking in
to see what you could find within.
You cloaked yourself in the light
never to see your own vile sight.
You met the mirror with a stare
but could not find a ‘self’ to repair,
for horrid sight left you bare.

In a daze you fell right through
abolishing all trace of that veil of light you once knew;
a veil of light that made you ‘who’?
In spite of the vile sight you denied at night,
despite the shadows mirroring your every sight,
you fell back into darkness again and cast out the light;
denying what was known to be right.

Through the keyhole of Life’s despair,
you found only emptiness, heartache and disrepair;
slowly loosing ‘self’ in tainted air.
Reaching for a worn out razor blade
and stumbling to the mirror exhausted and dismayed,
you caught a sight of yourself in the shade;
weeping angels were even afraid.

Despair’s joyless light began to flicker
in the face of an emerging and joyous snicker.
In the presence of your own sight
you found what you hoped was right,
staring at your sight in the dark and deadened night;
Reaching out towards mirror’s edge
where reality becomes broken by a wedge.

Through the looking glass,
nothing is what it seems.
Life can be insightful, delightful and bliss
but so can illusions and dreams.
Nothing is what it seems,
trapped behind the mirror of twisted dreams;
the ‘self’ is lost in the Adriatic Sea.

Through the keyhole, I see.

Written By: Anthony Avice Du Buisson (21/08/2015)

The poem was inspired by the surrealist artworks of René Magritte, specifically his works, “The False Mirror” (1928), “The Treachery of Images” (1929), and “Not to be reproduced” (1937).

Artwork Name: “The False Mirror” (1928)
Artwork by: René Magritte