Lao’s Mirror

The night sky rippling with aurora light,
the warm Earth making circles of the stars
and a hard frost clouding the eye of ponds.

Shaken from sleep beside the telephone
I drove all night, arriving before dawn
where willows had always waited by the beck.

I wanted to arrive before he died
and failed: long hours of alternating sodium
and sheer green dark had seemed to stretch my mind

so when I stop in that pause before morning
I’m sick of pain, as if I’ve left behind
my enemies who are not yet awake.

I am nowhere and have no name. I sneak
silently in and breathe quietly a moment
before undressing in front of the mirror

which speaks in gold devices and machines
whose feather touch can profile molecules
of soul amongst the early settlements.

 

Lao’s Mirror was a mirror belonging to Mr Lao in Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World. The mirror reflected the ‘insides’ or character of a person rather than the ‘outsides’. Understandably, it was not thought a good mirror.

Much of the material in Julian Turner's third collection works under malign influence, which comes most often from the hand of Man, but is also haunted by elements, spirits and other forces that seem beyond our control. This compelling book also celebrates human ingenuity and heroism in the face of such weighty opponents and laments our inclination to blame others for our misfortune and unhappiness.

Time and memory, the transitory nature of human remains from the earliest man-made monuments, how nature suffers from man-made depredations, the strange states of mind that arise from extreme experience – all of these contribute to this book's rich and multi-layered insight into the human condition.