Ariel

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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