Many Faces In A Mirror Poem by john o'connell

Many
faces in a mirror - multiplying
faces of one being,
dully and mistily ever changing, erring
till the death.

Voices of many pasts and buried pangs
looming into the uncertainty
of the fleeting moment's anxiety
for arrest and release.

Memories -
generations flowing into generations, like
clouds of permanent change,
wind across the circles
of earth's heavens.

And there are the waters rising dangerously
high and higher with the ultimate engulfing
of unforgiven faults and tragedies
not sufficiently drowned
in tears of blood and anguish.

And there is the baptism in the bath of self-confession
leading to poignant glimpses of patches azure
in a sky of cold and brittle shining glass.

The mirror shatters
into a million atoms
and while they escape
I remain
none
the wiser
just being those faces,
those voices,
those memories
those waters
that baptism
both recognizable
and at the same time
totally alien.