A Sort of Inferno

This business of being a mirror—you begin to question the reality of the mirror itself.
—W.H. Auden

One candle in a mirrored room:
You are naked and you’re on your own.
The flame throws galaxies that dance
across your eyes. You’re reflected
endlessly. There are too many of you
and there aren’t enough names here.

Your face is fractured and you can hear
flames echoing through this room—
a music that’s perfectly new to you.
Tempted, you practice a movement only you own,
admiring how nimbly the mirrors reflect
something that stays—always—not quite dance.

No breeze seeps in to make flames dance.
You are the only motion locked in here.
Even with your multiplied reflections
there are body parts you can’t see. The room’s
cruel as it is cold. It will not be known
by anyone—certainly not by you

with dull eyesight and cracked senses you
never could control. Now time’s long dance
has crushed your body. You never offered your own
melody. You’d like to sit, but here
the floor’s glassed and the candle teases the room
with light and endless mirrors that reflect

your little lost soul with all its defects—
forgotten sins, lost lies, all the flotsam you
locked away into that tiny room
down to your left. Things that don’t show in dance
but show themselves to you—now and here.
They belong to no one else. You own

them. All the shattered flaws. Your own
small heart, invisible back—that reflect
back to you like words you don’t want to hear.
There’s nothing else—no odors, just cold glass you
slide against. It’s hard to stand. Your dance
was left to gather dust in another room.

One flame and you. In mirrors that will own
your soul and call its dance. The infinite reflection
is your perfect room, your home. You live here.

A Theme of Machado’s

Walking past Washington Square
watching girls clothed in less
mystery than is good for you,
someone pushes by, turning your shoulder.

For less time than a toll from Saints Peter
and Paul, you glimpse a dark, hieratic head
that looks like—dead so long,
dressed fifteen years out of date—

He’s out of place and time but
Chinatown closes around him—
who was always someone else.

Still Life

Thin fog coats the bay
like breath on a mirror.

The abandoned prison,
some aquarium toy, rises—

A rock with memory of suffering—
Doors creak and gulls scream.

You and I perch on hilltops
nursing coffee, talking quietly

about antique goddess worship
and our tidy manuscripts.

Battle Dress

His wet socks fail
to wake up his long feet.
He pulls himself upright.

The knob of hydrant
is the only tool he has
to reach the vertical.

Epaulets are torn
from the fatigue jacket
but the Big Red One remains.

Camouflage pants—frayed—
shield his legs. He knows
he’s invisible from the waist down.

A kicked half-pint shatters
against the Seven-Eleven wall.
Today is all he owns.

As long as gray rain falls
over the red bridge
he will scream at the sky.

I find it difficult to write about my meditation practice. It’s just a built-in part of my life. I practice Soto Zen as taught by the San Francisco Zen Center, but I practice mostly at home. Each morning, I bathe and eat. Then I go into the front room, bow to the west ten times reciting the name of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. I read a paragraph or two of Buddhist teaching. Then I sit in a half-lotus position on two zafus facing a blank painter’s canvas. I recite the Metta Sutta (on Lovingkindness) and the Great Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra. Then I breathe, counting breaths with a very slight pressure on my fingers for about fifteen minutes. I recite the standard announcement of my Buddhism (I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha) and finish saying “Thank you lord Buddha” and get on with my day.

On my days off, I do multiple sitting sessions. A couple of times a year at least I like to take a full day retreat at the Zen Center.

It’s very simple. Nothing special. I’ve been doing this daily for the last eight years. I was practicing in a more desultory fashion for twenty years before that.

In an old poem I called it “Practice/of the needless.”

Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up Catholic in southern California. He is very fond of baseball, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante.

A full-length collection of poems, Starting from Tu Fu, was just published by Encircle Publications in September. His latest chapbook, Music for the Other Voices, is available from Finishing Line Press. A novel, The Magic War, is available from Loose Leaves Publishing.

He studied at the University of California at Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock, Robert Durling and Barbara Hull. His work appeared in several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals.

He lives with his wife, activist and documentarian Joan Juster, and makes his living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.

More on Mark J. Mitchell’s work can be found on our Links page.