MIRROR, KILL by Frank O'Hara

All the mirrors in the world don't help.
Nor am I moved by the calm emergence
of my image in the rain
It is not I who appears or imagines.

See
If you can
If you can make the unpleasant trip
The house where shadows of my own childhood
Watered and forced like overgrown bludgeons
You must look
I cannot.

I cannot face that fearful usage
and my eyes in, say,
The glass of a public bar.

Become a depraved hunt for other reflections.
What a blessed relief!
When it is some disgusting sight,
Anything
But the old shadowy bruising
Anything
But my private haunts.

When I am fifty
Shall my face drift into these elongations
of innocence and confront me?

Oh, rain, melt me!
Mirror, kill!