He Ate As Others Ate

The speaker describes a man eating and drinking as others do, entering morning light, then seeing behind the feast during a loud cracking of the mirror.

The speaker names the shared meal before the man's changed sight. The surviving lines leave what he sees behind the feast unexplained.

A man 'ate / As others ate / And drank / Rain red wine / As others drank', 'Pushed deep into / The light of morning / Like others', until 'In one loud cracking of the mirror' he 'saw behind the feast'.

Repetition makes conformity the poem's subject, and the cracked mirror gives the collection its title image. The poem stops at the moment of seeing without naming what lies behind the feast.