Fragments - Sylvia Plath

"I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?"

"I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek."...

"I'm incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strange of branches? --"
-Elm from Ariel

"A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!

And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?

Such pure leaps and spirals --
Surely they travel

The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift

Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleep, lilies, lilies.

Their flesh bears no relation
Cold folds of ego, the calla,

And the tiger, embellishing itself --
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.

The comets
Have such a space to cross,

Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off --

Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling

Through the black amnesia of heaven.
Why am I given

These lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes

Six-sided, white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair

Touching and melting
Nowhere."
- The Night Dances, from Ariel