Written by
Sylvia Plath |
What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?
It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?
I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.
When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking
'Is this the one I am too appear for,
Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?
Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,
Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules.
Is this the one for the annunciation?
My god, what a laugh!'
But it shimmers, it does not stop, and I think it wants me.
I would not mind if it were bones, or a pearl button.
I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year.
After all I am alive only by accident.
I would have killed myself gladly that time any possible way.
Now there are these veils, shimmering like curtains,
The diaphanous satins of a January window
White as babies' bedding and glittering with dead breath. O ivory!
It must be a tusk there, a ghost column.
Can you not see I do not mind what it is.
Can you not give it to me?
Do not be ashamed--I do not mind if it is small.
Do not be mean, I am ready for enormity.
Let us sit down to it, one on either side, admiring the gleam,
The glaze, the mirrory variety of it.
Let us eat our last supper at it, like a hospital plate.
I know why you will not give it to me,
You are terrified
The world will go up in a shriek, and your head with it,
Bossed, brazen, an antique shield,
A marvel to your great-grandchildren.
Do not be afraid, it is not so.
I will only take it and go aside quietly.
You will not even hear me opening it, no paper crackle,
No falling ribbons, no scream at the end.
I do not think you credit me with this discretion.
If you only knew how the veils were killing my days.
To you they are only transparencies, clear air.
But my god, the clouds are like cotton.
Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.
Sweetly, sweetly I breathe in,
Filling my veins with invisibles, with the million
Probable motes that tick the years off my life.
You are silver-suited for the occasion. O adding machine-----
Is it impossible for you to let something go and have it go whole?
Must you stamp each piece purple,
Must you kill what you can?
There is one thing I want today, and only you can give it to me.
It stands at my window, big as the sky.
It breathes from my sheets, the cold dead center
Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history.
Let it not come by the mail, finger by finger.
Let it not come by word of mouth, I should be sixty
By the time the whole of it was delivered, and to numb to use it.
Only let down the veil, the veil, the veil.
If it were death
I would admire the deep gravity of it, its timeless eyes.
I would know you were serious.
There would be a nobility then, there would be a birthday.
And the knife not carve, but enter
Pure and clean as the cry of a baby,
And the universe slide from my side.
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Written by
Carl Sandburg |
WHO knows what I know
when I have asked the night questions
and the night has answered nothing
only the old answers?
Who picked a crimson cryptogram,
the tail light of a motor car turning a corner,
or the midnight sign of a chile con carne place,
or a man out of the ashes of false dawn muttering “hot-dog” to the night watchmen:
Is there a spieler who has spoken the word or taken the number of night’s nothings? am I the spieler? or you?
Is there a tired head
the night has not fed and rested
and kept on its neck and shoulders?
Is there a wish
of man to woman
and woman to man
the night has not written
and signed its name under?
Does the night forget
as a woman forgets?
and remember
as a woman remembers?
Who gave the night
this head of hair,
this gipsy head
calling: Come-on?
Who gave the night anything at all
and asked the night questions
and was laughed at?
Who asked the night
for a long soft kiss
and lost the half-way lips?
who picked a red lamp in a mist?
Who saw the night
fold its Mona Lisa hands
and sit half-smiling, half-sad,
nothing at all,
and everything,
all the world ?
Who saw the night
let down its hair
and shake its bare shoulders
and blow out the candles of the moon,
whispering, snickering,
cutting off the snicker .. and sobbing ..
out of pillow-wet kisses and tears?
Is the night woven of anything else
than the secret wishes of women,
the stretched empty arms of women?
the hair of women with stars and roses?
I asked the night these questions.
I heard the night asking me these questions.
I saw the night
put these whispered nothings
across the city dust and stones,
across a single yellow sunflower,
one stalk strong as a woman’s wrist;
And the play of a light rain,
the jig-time folly of a light rain,
the creepers of a drizzle on the sidewalks
for the policemen and the railroad men,
for the home-goers and the homeless,
silver fans and funnels on the asphalt,
the many feet of a fog mist that crept away;
I saw the night
put these nothings across
and the night wind came saying: Come-on:
and the curve of sky swept off white clouds
and swept on white stars over Battery to Bronx,
scooped a sea of stars over Albany, Dobbs Ferry, Cape Horn, Constantinople.
I saw the night’s mouth and lips
strange as a face next to mine on a pillow
and now I know … as I knew always …
the night is a lover of mine …
I know the night is … everything.
I know the night is … all the world.
I have seen gold lamps in a lagoon
play sleep and murmur
with never an eyelash,
never a glint of an eyelid,
quivering in the water-shadows.
A taxi whizzes by, an owl car clutters, passengers yawn reading street signs, a bum on a park bench shifts, another bum keeps his majesty of stone stillness, the forty-foot split rocks of Central Park sleep the sleep of stone whalebacks, the cornices of the Metropolitan Art mutter their own nothings to the men with rolled-up collars on the top of a bus:
Breaths of the sea salt Atlantic, breaths of two rivers, and a heave of hawsers and smokestacks, the swish of multiplied sloops and war dogs, the hesitant hoo-hoo of coal boats: among these I listen to Night calling:
I give you what money can never buy: all other lovers change: all others go away and come back and go away again:
I am the one you slept with last night.
I am the one you sleep with tonight and tomorrow night.
I am the one whose passion kisses
keep your head wondering
and your lips aching
to sing one song
never sung before
at night’s gipsy head
calling: Come-on.
These hands that slid to my neck and held me,
these fingers that told a story,
this gipsy head of hair calling: Come-on:
can anyone else come along now
and put across night’s nothings again?
I have wanted kisses my heart stuttered at asking,
I have pounded at useless doors and called my people fools.
I have staggered alone in a winter dark making mumble songs
to the sting of a blizzard that clutched and swore.
It was the night in my blood:
open dreaming night,
night of tireless sheet-steel blue:
The hands of God washing something,
feet of God walking somewhere.
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