She has been approached before
By soldiers who find a sullen inhabitant
Someone young and alone.
Soldiers were coming in with just bits of their bodies,
Soldiers lost from themselves,
Those running away from or running towards war.
Some people you just had to embrace,
Tenderness towards the unknown.
A **** with a solider,
Even when he is a tender lover,
Enjoyed more for their weight
Than the warmth they bring.
The hollowness and darkness was full of such choreography.
She was surrounded day and night by their wounds.
All through her youth
She never looked at herself in mirrors
Just her shadows on the wall.
But she wanted to save him,
The unseen man,
And he had wanted to see himself.
“Keep the mirror still, my dear.”
She leaned the mirror against the wall
And carefully turned the reflection the on herself.
She watched her little portrait as if trying to discern the figure of the girl she had stepped away from.
Youth judging age at the end of its outstretched hand:
The third eye of salvation.
She raised her skirt and moved forward.
Her body had been in war and, as in love, it had used every part of itself.
She was more patient than nurse.
But all this she could burn down if she wished
And she smiled at that.
this is a collection of lines from the english patient by michael ondaatje made into a poem