Poem Response 2

 

Nude in Front of Mirror By: Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg

 Naked Girl And Mirror

By: Judith Wright

This is not I. I had no body once-
only what served my need to laugh and run
and stare at stars and tentatively dance
on the fringe of foam and wave and sand and sun.
Eyes loved, hands reached for me, but I was gone
on my own currents, quicksilver, thistledown.
Can I be trapped at last in that soft face?

I stare at you in fear, dark brimming eyes.
Why do you watch me with that immoderate plea-
'Look under these curled lashes, recognize
that you were always here; know me-be me.'
Smooth once-hermaphrodite shoulders, too tenderly
your long slope runs, above those sudden shy
curves furred with light that spring below your space.

No, I have been betrayed. If I had known
that this girl waited between a year and a year,
I'd not have chosen her bough to dance upon.
Betrayed, by that little darkness here, and here
this swelling softness and that frightened stare
from eyes I will not answer; shut out here
from my own self, by its new body's grace-

for I am betrayed by someone lovely. Yes,
I see you are lovely, hateful naked girl.
Your lips in the mirror tremble as I refuse
to know or claim you. Let me go-let me be gone.
You are half of some other who may never come.
Why should I tend you? You are not my own;
you seek that other-he will be your home.

Yet I pity your eyes in the mirror, misted with tears;
I lean to your kiss. I must serve you; I will obey.
Some day we may love. I may miss your going, some day,
though I shall always resent your dumb and fruitful years.
Your lovers shall learn better, and bitterly too,
if their arrogance dares to think I am part of you.

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 If you have starred at your self up close and personal for more than a minute you may feel a bit self conscious, to say the least. Judith Wright's poem has captured the warring emotions of an adolescent girl noticing her body's changes in a mirror. Wright captures the emotions of alarm, hate, sadness, and confusion. she does this by not allowing her poem to flow in a continuous, repetitive rhyme. She halts the reader's tendency to expect a matching rhyme. Interestingly, this mirrors the narrator of the poem who is feeling several different emotions in quick succession.  

Stanza two's dialogue, 'Look under these curled lashes, recognize- that you were always here; know me-be me', seems to be the exact question my reflection would ask if it had a voice. Growing up, I remember the pure abandonment of childhood, as Wright talks about in stanza one. Running through a muddy paddock in my white school shoes, trying to dig a hole to China in my mother's vegetable garden. However, I also remember when a flip was switched sometime in the fifth grade. A whole new cast of responsibilities were expected of me as a "young lady". In turn I expected more of myself as well. As Wright says, there was a time when I had no body. The memory of what that may have been like is strewn across several boxes of family photos. Ultimately, as in the last stanza of Wright's poem, I obeyed the person I grew into and moved on.