Edward Bond - The Sheet of Glass

The Sheet of Glass

There is a sheet of glass. 

You see through to what is beyond. 

A window 82

It keeps out cold and rain. 

You paint the back with silver 

You see yourself. 

The same glass but now it does a different thing 

The opposite 

You see yourself but not beyond.

At night you dream. 

Can’t remember who you are. 

You go to the mirror to look for yourself. 

All you see is the dark. 

You can’t see through it 

.....or anything in it. 

You don’t know who you are or what’s beyond the mirror. 

A dream is the opposite of being awake. 

Or is it ? 

Is a dream a sort of mirror ? 

You wake and go to the mirror. 

The dream’s upset you. 

You’d like a mirror which shows you who you are and at the same time lets 

 you see what’s beyond it. 

So you break the mirror. 

You cut your hand. 

It bleeds. 

But it works ! 

Through the broken gaps you see what’s beyond the mirror 

- you see other people there and what’s happening. 

And in the broken mirror still in place you see yourself. 

But only bits of yourself. 

For every bit you see of what’s beyond the mirror you have to lose a bit of 

 yourself. 

It can’t be otherwise. 

It is the law of opposites. 

Now 

The mirror was magic. 

Every morning when you washed your face you asked it 

“Who’s the best person in the world ?” 

The mirror looked you straight in the eye and said “You”. 

But the morning on which it was broken 

....it didn’t 

- and it never did again. 

Instead it said : 

What are you for ? 

What are other people for?

[Young man with a broom in front of the destroyed bedding shop S. Kaliski & Co in Berlin after Kristallnacht, 1938. Copyright: The Wiener Library]