City of Gray

In a city of gray,
in dreams I found myself before a mirror
in which drab buildings, sky, and grass
were reflected in dazzling color.
A world full of grace, of life.
of softly glowing tones and rich jewelled beams.
But the mirror surface was as hard as diamond
and, try as I could, no passage was there.

Was it my world reflected there?
Or was another, truer life existing
beyond the portal's surface? Was
my world seen as but a gray reflection,
a monochrome cosmos to be wondered at in pity?

What lies beyond the glass, I do not know.
But until I break its image,
in my hands seize brush and color,
and rend the bleakness with new-bursting life,
My place shall remain but
in a city of gray.

It reminds me of my struggles with mental illness. I was so obsessed with there being another reality out there that I could not perceive. It turns out that it really existed and I just needed the proper chemicals to see it.

And welcome to DU. :toast:

Interesting.

Facinating poem Jacobpike. I didn't understand a word.

Facinating poem Jacobpike. I didn't understand a word.

Neither did I.

;-)

he's standing before a mirror and outside the mirror it is grey and inside it is colorful.

He's trying to figure out how to break the mirror to get inside where it is colorful, or how to see the world around him as it is in the mirror.

I guess the last part was saying that, while it's easy for me to just get stuck in a fantasy world of how things could be, unless I stop concentrating on that fantasy world (break the mirror) and actually do something about my real life, I'm going to remain stuck in the gray world. In other words, it's a "telling myself to get up off my ass and get to work" poem. ;-)

Actually, the line about breaking the mirror was the last thing I added to the poem, and probably the weakest part. It just didn't seem as if turning away from the mirror would be enough. But I think, in retrospect, the symbolism of the mirror shifts about two-thirds of the way through. Initially, it's showing me the possibility in life, then it becomes an obstacle to obtaining it. I'm not really sure how well that works. But, hey, it was only the second poem I've written in the past twenty-two years. (And if anyone thinks it sucks, you should see the first one. Truly painful.)

Interestingly, I notice that you use the British "grey" rather than the American "gray." I was reading an essay by Madeleine L'Engle, the author of A Wrinkle in Time and a poet herself, who says that she always thinks of those words as two different colors: "grey" as a softer, gentler, more pewter-like color, and "gray" as a brighter and coarser. That was why I used the latter in my poem. I wanted to get the sense of an aggressive, almost oppressive absence of color.