See how the mirror sees everything the other way round,
draws each object here into a perspective of its own,
mixes up left and right without our knowing it,
but then sets down everything before it sensibly again

in one rectangular frame. Its directions are different,
its edges impartial, its textures finespun at close range,
its patterns of light and shadow just as they are,
the faces it makes, mute, apt behind the opaque wall

of our first incomprehensible encounter with it.
There we suddenly find the faces we don’t possess,
their rage, greed, conflict, self preservation,
and a trembling of lost colors, every now and then.

Translated from Marathi by Vinay Dharwadker.