What they truly are

Mirrors: to this day, no expertise can explain
the key to what you truly are;
filling the interstices of time’s plane
with mere holes as from a colander.

Spendthrifts of the vacant foyer –
wide as woods beneath twilight stars…
And the chandelier bounds like a sixteen-pointer
through your impenetrability.

Sometimes you are filled with canvases.
Some even seem absorbed into your depths –
other styles you timidly dismiss.

But the loveliest remains, until appears
Narcissus to press her chaste lips,
fully liberated and crystal clear.

[tr.: r. hunter]

Mirrors are not just objects, as they are also the frame to a part of the environment they’re placed in, repeated in a different point of view. And lots of other things, as Rilke stressed.

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