I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

The poem opens with these five lines, in which the speaker insists on the objectivity of their point of view. As the reader might expect, based on the poem’s title, the speaker here is, indeed, a mirror—“silver and exact.” It’s worth noting that the mirror’s discourse on objectivity is rather extended, taking up, as it does, more than half of the first stanza. It’s also noteworthy that the speaker repeats their claim to objectivity several times, all in slightly different ways. The very fact that the mirror states and restates the same claim so many times may cause the reader to feel suspicious. If the mirror truly does reflect everything it sees with no distortion, shouldn’t the crystal clarity of their vision speak for itself? The reader may find it additionally suspicious that the speaker concludes their claims about objectivity by tacitly comparing themself to “a little god” with a perfectly neutral, dispassionate eye. Once again, the reader must ask: How does this claim to godlike objectivity square with the mirror’s physical limitation as a bounded, “four-cornered” being?

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart.

In lines 6–8, the mirror reflects on the object their silver surface reflects most consistently: the pink, speckled wall that stands opposite them. Specifically, the mirror describes how they “meditate” on this wall. The use of the word meditate suggests a deeper kind of reflection than we might expect from a mirror, implying a dimension of depth beyond the silver surface. The mirror affirms this sense of depth when they indicate that the speckled wall “is part of [their] heart.” On the one hand, this phrase suggests that the “essence” of the mirror is constituted by whatever the mirror reflects. On the other hand, the phrase implies that the personified mirror feels some kind of affection for the pink wall, which indicates that they may be less objective than they previously claimed.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.

Lines 10–11 mark the beginning of the poem’s second stanza. Here, the speaker takes on a new incarnation as a lake. Like the mirror, the lake is primarily characterized by its reflective surface. It’s important to note how odd it is that the speaker seems to transform from a mirror into a lake in the middle of the poem. On the surface, these objects are radically different from each other. One is manufactured in human-designed factories, while the other is a geological formation that came into existence over millions of years. Yet what draws these two incarnations of the speaker together is the shared property of reflection. Evidently, this property isn’t limited to the physical reflection of light waves. Both the mirror and the lake also reflect on the things they reflect. In the first stanza, for instance, the mirror reflected on how the pink, speckled wall became essential for their sense of identity. Here, in the second stanza, the lake reflects on how they become essential to the woman who makes a daily pilgrimage to their waters in an effort to discover “what she really is.”

I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

The speaker closes the poem with these lines (15–18). The passage quoted here begins with the lake reflecting on how they have become important to the aging woman who visits them every day. Yet these lines also help underscore the fact that the woman is important to the lake. Notably, the lake expresses this sentiment in a negative way: namely, through their apparent anxiety about the woman’s rapid aging. From the lake’s perspective as a geological entity, the woman’s life passes very quickly. This is what they mean when they say, “In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman / Rises toward her day after day.” In other words, time has passed so quickly that the young girl she used to be has disappeared, and the image of her youthful face has been replaced by the reflection of an aging woman. The speaker registers their shock at the woman’s seemingly sudden transformation when they liken her elderly face to that of “a terrible fish.” The woman’s rapid aging causes the lake anxiety and forces them to reckon with just how short a human life really is.

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