TRANSFIXED BY THE INTERSTICES OF CULTURE
ARIEL
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow
Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks—-
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows,
Something else
Hauls me through air—-
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.
White
Godiva, I unpeel—-
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies,
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
Sylvia Plath
