Ariel

Painting by Levy-Dhurmer

"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).