I Am Not Dust

'This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary  
The trees of the mind are black.  
The light is blue.'  - Sylvia Plath
 
(1)  
 
Under the dew  
There is a place ---  
Cold, dark and wild,  
Embued with peace.  
The moon is aware of it  
In its pale knowing;  
It is blue-black, A-ghast.  
 
I came from the dirt to  
Return to wintering  
Here, where I no longer  
Drip red ---  
 
Blunt razor in hand like  
The space in between  
My thoughts ---  
 
I need no pardon here  
From whiteness,  
Deaths blank page is  
A sleeping bee.  
 
No flower fractures
The crust over me,  
But a poem crawls  
Bare and wild.  
It eats no dust,  
Nor becomes it.  
 
It never knew itself,  
Never woken from  
The dream ---  
 
Its epic knocks on  
The gate of the necropolis  
It smoke still rising,  
Ambient and heady.  
Here there is no divinity,  
But malignity.  
And it terrifies me ---  
This sunless atrocity.  
 
I am a taproot strangled  
In a barren ground ---  
A consequence yet unfound,  
 
But I am not dust, surely no,  
I am not dust!  
 
(2)  
 
What more could life had wanted,  
Hadn't I written enough?  
Was not the moonlight to  
Arouse an echo, careworn  
And sorrow bound?  
 
Did I not trample the  
Dark thing as a wild horse?  
Or gallop into its radiant meaning?  
 
Oh, irretrievable faults,  
Oh agitants;  
Grave-turning bystanders  
In merciless hushes ---  
Release me, release me.  
 
I tried many times to  
Get back to the brute  
That was you,  
Oh, lifes dark cold pew;  
The bells rang each time  
I tried bonging servience  
To You ---  
 
But nothing of commonsense  
Came through.  
So I married my vampire  
Along with you.  
And here at last I lay  
Under the death-tree:  
Yew.  
 
Its the same one I  
Always viewed before  
The antiseptic moon in  
Silent review.  
Its indignant shine always  
Came through,  
Who knew?  
 
(3)  
 
A poem lies at the  
Bare breast of knowing,  
Its stillborn phantom;  
My final award ---  
It waxes fatherless  
As I, As I,  
In deaths pallid grasp  
Far reaching as sky.  
 
When a poem no longer  
Breathes on its own,  
Love cannot come here ---  
It is an invalid.  
Trapped under shrouded  
Knowing, its fates winds  
Blowing.  
 
Yet, I am a poem,  
Oh engulfing one of  
Mud and water;  
Coffin of endearment ---  
The world.  
 
Read like some old  
Ancient language unearthed  
To enlighten the roses ---  
Their corsets splitting  
Their ghosts in two,  
Their milky vase,  
Empty.  
 
(4)  
 
In my loneliness  
I talk to the stars  
And they listen ---  
Words lifted up on  
A crane to the sky;  
Dark and humorless.  
 
The answer is lifted  
And removed from  
My breast like a newborn  
Gasping for breath;  
What event ---  
The prodigy walks on  
Air its footsoles bare.  
 
If I've lost one life  
I've lost two.  
The dark earth  
Killed us both, that  
Empty school-room ---  
I, a heroine in  
Winters periphery.  
 
Oh, effigy, sprung  
From the black lake of  
Expressionless silence,  
Its advice as flat as  
Lily-pads, where do  
Your dark souls  
Retreat to?  
Do you not astound as  
A sirens blare?  
 
Sounds from the belfry ---  
The stone temple with its  
Empty pews,  
Cold with despair,  
Murdering me in  
Silent review,  
Its eyes lifting in a  
Hope renewed  
Revisiting my mistakes,  
My wounds.  
 
(5)  
 
Oh, life, from you,  
I ripped the bandage off  
And walked away,  
Rather I flew ---  
A drunkard abandoning  
The pitcher-stream of  
Sustenant ecstasy;  
To live, I never  
Needed you.  
 
Now, I lie as  
Paradoxical a charade as  
I ever knew, under a  
Green-tide feeding off  
My demise and obstructing  
My view; but my words,  
They linger even as a  
Churchyard hears them,  
Its ears deaf with bird-song.  
A spring, I give in to,  
A spring, Oh, you.  
 
Sprung from knowledge,  
Bared of forgiveness,  
Early flowers emerge  
From bulbs of milky-white  
Solitude ---  
Its all rising anew,  
My followers numbers grew.  
They were timid flower-sniffers  
Who saw nothing as even to  
My death they flew.  
 
Recieved, it was, my  
Accolade; my plaque of  
Red triumph a basket of  
Fake flowers that  
Bled through.  
I followed the tinted  
Path to you, my arms bled  
Empty of life. ---  
How free, how free  
Was I.  
 
(6)  
 
I left her crying there,  
Pained, aching and wooden ---  
A book of poems.  
Under a tree that drips  
Noxious memory;  
Dew.  
 
I, too create death.  
 
I let her be common so  
That it may be known that  
In the presence of poetry  
One is never, never alone.  
 
So I lay here  
Clutching to my breasts,  
A poem, a poem;  
Meaning and  
Sad, Adieu.  
 
                -----  
 
 
 
Inspired by these writings:
 
   'Crossing The Water'  
   'Daddy'  
   'Edge'  
   'Electra On Azalea Path'  
   'Elm'  
   'Event'  
   'In Plaster'  
   'Leaving Early'  
   'Love Is A Parallax'  
   'Stillborn'  
   'The Bell Jar'  
   'The Moon And The Yew Tree'  
   'Three Women'  
 
                 - By Sylvia Plath