Charles Simic: "Miracle Glass Co."

Heavy mirror carried
Across the street,
I bow to you
And to everything that appears in you,
Momentarily
And never again the same way:

This street with its pink sky,
Row of gray tenements,
A lone dog,
Children on roller-skates,
Woman buying flowers,
Someone looking lost.

In you, mirror framed in gold
And carried across the street
By someone I can’t even see,
To whom, too, I bow.

"Miracle Glass Co." by Charles Simic, from A Wedding in Hell. © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1994.  

Photography credit: Detail from photo series entitled "Carrying a Mirror Thru La Candelaria," by Miguel (originally color).