Ariel by Sylvia Plath

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.