Reversibility Poem by Philippe Beck

In winter, flakes come down
like the feathers
of some shy bird.
Woman at the black window
gives three drops of blood
to Snow.
It's a silk poppy
with discreet petals.
Soon she has a child of three colours.
One colour provides her name.
Mother Consequent is peopled.
She has a mirror that tells her if she's special.
A-magical mirror.
The child grows. She is like the day.
Questioning the mirror
makes new colours in the heart
of the mother consequent:
yellow and green.
Heart lurches in the stomach.
Mother Successive.
Pride grows in her
like dark grass.
Deep in the forest, child
like the day is abandoned.
Animal etiquette is humanized.
Etiquette of speech and desire.
The inside replaced.
Reaffected.
Snow seems eliminated.
But in Forest,
Snow turns over leaves. Night falls.
She finds a house.
Miniature. Like Alice?
White tablecloth and sheets inside.
Is it the Flying Dutchman?
A ship adrift?
Black night masks mountains
with their future mines.
Mother Consequent gets dressed.
She sells good quality.
Coloured lace, round comb,
twin-coloured apple.
White and red.
Snow White is almost dead,
or officially dead. Discoloured. Mirror
tells the truth coldly.
And the real antechamber.
She is not in the black earth.
She is intact in the glass.
The animals mourn her.
White seems infinitely asleep.
She has a nearly-smile.
Is admired by one
she will love on the instant;
or in a few short moments
the impulse begins.
And the ‘mother's' heart
shrivels;
envy has scorched its motions.
Tough life.


after ‘Snow-White'