Sylvia Plath//Curious French Cat

Sylvia Plath//Lorelei

It is no night to drown in:
A full  moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness.  Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
of quiet.  From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble.  They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be.  Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler
Deranged by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitcheds reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetube, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drfting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

Sylvia Plath//The Night Dances

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 sleeps, 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 amnesias 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.