Jacques Prevert

Broken Mirror

Broken Mirror - meaning Summary

Shattered Image, Remembered Voice

The poem depicts a small, youthful figure in the speaker's head whose playful undoing—unlacing shoelaces—precipitates the collapse of a festival. In the aftermath, silence reveals a distant voice addressed to the speaker, described as torn, fragile, innocent and desolate. The speaker presses bloody, trembling hands to the chest and finds seven broken mirror fragments that carry the other person's twinkling smile. It presents inner rupture and memory: a private catastrophe that fragments identity while preserving a fragile, haunting presence of love and loss.

Read Complete Analyses

That small man who always sang, that small man who danced in my head, that small man with youth undid his shoelaces and broke all the barracks of the festival, suddenly everything collapsed, and in the silence of the festival in the ruin of the festival I heard your happy voice, your voice so torn and fragile, innocent and desolate came from afar, and called me, and I put my hands on my chest where they trembled bloody seven broken pieces of mirror with your twinkling smile.

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