Sylvia Plath - Poetry's Lioness

Their Dark Address: Nick and the Candlestick

I am a miner. The light burns blue. 
Waxy stalactites 
Drip and thicken, tears 

The earthen womb 
Exudes from its dead boredom. 
Black bat airs 

Wrap me, raggy shawls, 
Cold homicides. 
They weld to me like plums. 

Old cave of calcium 
Icicles, old echoer. 
Even the newts are white, 

Those holy Joes. 
And the fish, the fish - 
Christ! they are panes of ice, 

A vice of knives, 
A piranha 
Religion, drinking 

Its first communion out of my live toes. 
The candle 
Gulps and recovers its small altitude, 

Its yellows hearten. 
O love, how did you get here? 
O embryo 

Remembering, even in sleep, 
Your crossed position. 
The blood blooms clean 

In you, ruby. 
The pain 
You wake to is not yours. 

Love, love, 
I have hung our cave with roses, 
With soft rugs - 

The last of Victoriana. 
Let the stars 
Plummet to their dark address, 

Let the mercuric 
Atoms that cripple drip 
Into the terrible well, 

You are the one 
Solid the spaces lean on, envious. 
You are the baby in the barn.