https://soundcloud.com/justvera/mirror-man-justvera
Hear all about it: Mirror Man. How I love David Gardiner’s poem/lyrics AND vocal performance. Expect the unexpected…
There’s a man behind the mirror by the table in the hall
Though the social worker tells me that he isn’t there at all
But I’ve seen him in there staring and he wasn’t there before
With those eyes that seem to follow you, and chill you to the core
He’s old and stooped and wrinkled and his beard is long and grey
I’ve asked him what he wants with me; of course he doesn’t say
But he’s watching and he’s waiting and there’s hatred in his stare
And I know he sees inside me, that to him my soul is bare
I know I shouldn’t talk about him, no one understands
They haven’t seen what I have seen, or travelled other lands
They haven’t any notion of what worlds might lie beyond
Like a little swimming insect that has never left its pond
They want me to move out of here: I know I never can
I’d have to pass the mirror and defy the mirror man
He never would allow it. No, there wouldn’t be a hope
He would put me to the guillotine, the cutlass or the rope
And the door behind the mirror man would open for my soul
And the doorman at the gates of Hell would find me on his roll
And tell me they’d been waiting and my place was long prepared
That the kind of life I’d lived would mean I never could be spared
And the door behind the mirror man would close for ever more
And everything would seem to be the way it was before
The table and the hat rack and the ducks upon the wall
But not a trace of me, as if I’d never been at all
(Lyrics by David Gardiner)