Ariel: No. 5, Lady Lazarus - Sylvia Plath, Phyllis Curtin, Joseph Rabbai

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

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.