Not to be Reproduced, by René Magritte

Sometimes the light surprises us
with what it knows
the way old light from space
brings images
of stars that died
millennia ago,
the way an image grows
and is not simply seen
remembering times past
how light becomes the handmaid of all time,
the way it flows around us
like water round a boat,
the way the mat of rays is warped,
the surface of the lake deformed,
both warp and weft
the way time is by gravity.

A man stands looking in a mirror.
We stand behind
and see his rear view twice --
once in our reality
then once more in the glass.
So should we now assume
that he sees in the mirror what we see?
Perhaps his light
has different memories,
has not been wrenched
or made to flow
in some more stressful way.
He sees his face.
His face looks back at him.

His face looks back at him...
Consider for a moment
how strange that sentence is.
Familiarity has packaged it
as something obvious.
It's nothing of the sort.
If time could but reverse,
then his reflection in the glass
might look out of its world and see
the back of its own head.
The virtual see the real.


Written for The Mag, to whom thanks for the image as a prompt.