Not young, and not renewable, but man.
Mirror in February is one of Thomas Kinsella’s best loved poems. On a damp February morning a man stops while shaving and catches his own tired face in the mirror. In that moment he realises that his youth is over.
Outside, the pruned trees look wounded, and Kinsella sets them beside his own body: both are being cut back by time. He has also reached the age at which Christ died, a milestone that makes the feeling sharper.
The ending is calm rather than bitter. He gets on with his day with as much grace as he can, accepting what he is. The poem first appeared in Poetry magazine in Chicago in May 1962 and then in his collection Downstream (Dolmen Press). Generations of Irish students met it in the Soundings anthology at school.
Read the full poem: Mirror in February by Thomas Kinsella at the Poetry Foundation. You will also find it in his Selected Poems (Carcanet).
Another incredible poem from my list of the top 100 Irish poems.
A comment about the poem Mirror in February I read summed it up very well:
The steady drip-drip-drip of deterioration in sage of skin and dulling of eyes. But we all, man or woman, continue to dress ourselves in our armour to face the day.
Who was Thomas Kinsella?
Thomas Kinsella was an Irish poet. He was born in Inchicore, Dublin, in 1928 and died in December 2021, aged 93.
What poems did Thomas Kinsella write?
Poems 1956-1973 (Dublin, The Dolmen Press, 1980);
Another September (Dolmen, 1958);
Poems & Translations (New York: Atheneum, 1961);
Downstream (Dolmen, 1962);
The Clergyman (Dublin: St Sepulchre’s Press, 1965);
Tear (Cambridge, MA: Pym-Randall Press, 1969);
Nightwalker and Other Poems (Dolmen, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 1968; New York, Knopf, 1969);
Ely Place (Dublin: Tara Telephone Publications/St. Sepulchre’s Press, 1972);
The Good Fight (Peppercanister 1973);
Notes from the Land of the Dead and Other Poems (Knopf, 1973);
Fifteen Dead (Peppercanister, 1979);
One and Other Poems (Dolmen, Oxford University Press, 1979);
Peppercanister Poems 1972-1978 (Dolmen 1979; Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Wake Forest University Press, 1979);
One Fond Embrace (Deerfield, MA: Deerfield Press, 1981);
St Catherine’s Clock (Oxford University Press, 1987);
Blood & Family (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988);
Poems from Centre City (Peppercanister, 1990);
Madonna and Other Poems (Peppercanister, 1991);
Open Court (Peppercanister, 1991);
The Pen Shop (Peppercanister, 1997);
The Familiar (Peppercanister, 1999);
Godhead (Peppercanister, 1999);
Citizen of the World (Peppercanister, 2000);
Littlebody (Peppercanister, 2000);
Collected Poems 1956-2001 (Oxford University Press, 2001);
Marginal Economy (Peppercanister, 2006);
Collected Poems 1956-2001 (Wake Forest University Press, 2006);
Belief and Unbelief (Peppercanister, 2007);
Man of War (Peppercanister, 2007);
Selected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2007; Winston-Salem, NC: Wake Forest University Press, 2010)
Fat Master (Peppercanister, 2011);
Love Joy Peace (Peppercanister, 2011).
Late Poems (Carcanet, 2013).
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