Vieve

 

 

 

Totem

 

by Sylvia Plath

 

The engine is killing the track, the track is silver,

It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless.

 

Its running is useless.

At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields,

 

Dawn guilds the farmers like pigs,

Swaying slightly in their thick suits,

 

White towers of Smithfield ahead,

Fat haunches and blood on their minds.

 

There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers,

The butcher's guillotine that whispers: 'How's this, how's this?'

 

In the bowl the hare in aborted,

Its baby head out of the way, embalmed in spice,

 

Flayed of fur and humanity.

Let us eat it like Plato's afterbirth,

 

Let us eat it like Christ.

These are the people that were important-

 

Their round eyes, their teeth, their grimaces

On a stick that rattles and clicks, a counterfeit snake.

 

Shall the hood of the cobra appall me-

The lonelines of its eye, the eye of the mountains

 

Through which the sky eternally threads itself?

The world is blood-hot and personal

 

Dawn says, with its blood-flush.

There is no terminus, only suitcases

 

Out of which the same self unfolds like a suit

Bald and shiny, with pockets of wishes,

 

Notions and tickets, short circuits and folding mirrors.

I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms.

 

And in truth it is terrible,

Multiplied in the eyes of the flies.

 

They buzz like blue children

In nets of the infinite,

 

Roped in at the end by the one

Death with its many sticks.

 

 

 

 

1 - 4 of 13   Show all • Search
  • Coil
    before the dark air loses its charge
    20 lines, 6 comments, August 26. In love, noguest
  • Muriel
    I am reduced to electricity. A series of wires.
    25 lines, 12 comments, May 30. In Prose
  • unhinged
    of stalled engines and corroded valves
    22 lines, 19 comments, May 11
  • Sea
    breathing light and sound
    19 lines, 6 comments, February 25. In noguest

 

 

Communication is key . . .


 

1 - 4 of 10   Show all
  • Age of Rain on September 13
    That is one of my favorite pieces by Plath (whom I adore)
  • Wesley Storer on July 8
    poetry true to form. The human race has become a bunch of robots in order to tolerate the emotional pain of life.
  • natari on May 30
    Hey just wanted to write on your page
  • Tqop on May 20
    Dude,
    You rock!!!

 

 

 

face image: Reach.

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