THE MIRROR In memory of my father I He was no longer my father but I was still his son; I would get to grips with that cold paradox, the remote figure in his Sunday best who was buried the next day. A great day for tears, snifters of sherry, whiskey, beef sandwiches, tea. An old mate of his was recounting their day excursion to Youghal in the Thirties, how he was his first partner on the Cork/Skibbereen route in the late Forties. There was a splay of Mass cards on the sitting-room mantelpiece which formed a crescent round a glass vase, his retirement present from C.I.E. II I didn't realize till two days later it was the mirror took his breath away. The monstrous old Victorian mirror with the ornate gilt frame we had found in the three-storey house when we moved in from the country. I was afraid that it would sneak down from the wall and swallow me up in one gulp in the middle of the night. While he was decorating the bedroom he had taken down the mirror without asking for help; soon he turned the colour of terracotta and his heart broke that night. III There was nothing for it but to set about finishing the job, papering over the cracks, painting the high window, stripping the door, like the door of a crypt. When I took hold of the mirror I had a fright. I imagined him breathing through it. I heard him say in a reassuring whisper: I'll give you a hand here. And we lifted the mirror back in position above the fireplace, my father holding it steady while I drove home the two nails. -- Paul Muldoon, born `1951 Co. Armagh.