Enrique Lihn

There is no Narcissus to speak of

When you’re 52 the mirror is the other.

There’s no Narcissus to speak of, no passion

in seeing oneself in the other. The water

in the pond is pitiless, finally hard

as a bad snapshot, it tears to pieces

and the mirror turns liquid: it goes back to fluidity

and that liquefied glass eye that once wept;

is, at last, a pond of endless green water:

a pond from which flows, surrounded by her hair

and beneath the water lilies: a nymph, a nymph…

— translated from the Spanish by Mary Crow