By Edna St Vincent MillayA Visit To The Asylum
Once from a big, big building, When I was small, small, The queer folk in the windows Would smile at me and call. And in the hard wee gardens Such pleasant men would hoe: "Sir, may we touch the little girl's hair!"-- It was so red, you know. They cut me colored asters With shears so sharp and neat, They brought me grapes and plums and pears And pretty cakes to eat. And out of all the windows, No matter where we went, The merriest eyes would follow me And make me compliment. There were a thousand windows, All latticed up and down. And up to all the windows, When we went back to town, The queer folk put their faces, As gentle as could be; "Come again, little girl!" they called, and I Called back, "You come see me!"
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by Sylvia PlathElm
For Ruth Fainlight I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there. Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse. All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Echoing, echoing. Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush. And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic. I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the root My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires. Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. A wind of such violence Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek. The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me Cruelly, being barren. Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her. I let her go. I let her go Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me. I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart? I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches?—-- Its snaky acids hiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill. |