Sylvia Plath. 2

photograph by Rollie MacKenna, 1959 

Nick and the Candlestick

I am a miner. The light burns blue.   

Waxy stalactites

Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb

Exudes from its dead boredom.   

Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,   

Cold homicides.

They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium   

Icicles, old echoer.

Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.

And the fish, the fish—

Christ! they are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,   

A piranha   

Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.   

The candle

Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.

O love, how did you get here?   

O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,   

Your crossed position.   

The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.   

The pain

You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,

I have hung our cave with roses,   

With soft rugs—

The last of Victoriana.   

Let the stars

Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric   

Atoms that cripple drip   

Into the terrible well,

You are the one

Solid the spaces lean on, envious.   

You are the baby in the barn.