The Veil

' If you only knew how the veils were
    killing my days '     -Sylvia Plath

(1)

Lift the veil ---
The secret is revealed.
The numbing millennia
Cannot shake its
Vestiges.

It slithers a substance
Flaccid as a January morn,
Stiffening its shimmering
Substitutions.

It has a heart
As secrets do, it wears a
Suit of grey; its weatherproof
Guaranteed not to fail
Anytime soon.

The still air preys upon it
To silence its last shriek;
To become the Earths' sweetheart
In terraces of drowning.

A germination
Of all the worlds
Fears, fears, fears ---

Its eyes rampantly seeking,
Wrung in metal;
A fate, a fate.

How I never wanted
It revealed, I tried to
Kill it, kill it.

It runs like hell ---
You'll never catch it.

(2)

Timeless and gradient,
Eyes of morning;
Seeking its lies
Written in history.

A guise
To end all transparencies
In a smog of invisibles;
Clouded, curtained
Restitution.

I pry, I pry ---
Into a million efficiencies
Wrung by unknowns,
Captive cries.

Clean and wet
And part of the universe
Dies; I saw it crawl on a
Patch of sky, then in a
Drawer ---

How enduringly scented
By time.

A curious thing,
This paradox I sit upon,
Gazing into multitudes of
Worlds ---

It rattles and shakes itself
Clean to slither by,
Complacently waiting
To watch me die.

(3)

Window on the world
Closing in, a ring,
A hole in the day.
How quick I was to
Cast it away.

Its perspective a gaping
Wound to poultice;
Replaceable and readied.
A pang of solitude gives
Birth to itself ---

Glassy and teary-eyed
Stumbling among frigid
Sanctities; such lies.

How forgiven, I
To breathe that fresh air,
Lemon-scented,
Adding the sums of it
To my own demise ---

I am presented whole
At dawn, then recanted
Short, at eventide.

Nevertheless, I never
Cried for you or me,
Or the thing harboring
Such deciept.

And only a present you
Bring, Oh, Life, and within ---
Such a delicacy of things.

(4)

An historical chapter
Written in stone,
Ungodly stopper
Dead at its center ---

Breathing, stiffening
Miraculous reasons
Wafting its mediocrity
Along a slackening trail
To small injustices ---

Small, trivial and
Unsnared by reason.

Story, Oh Story,
How you allude to my
Enshroudment ---
To end it all, to end it all,
Frankly, there is no logical
Way to do it.

The days are endless
Cumulous in enormity
Unopened in its wrappings.

You stumble in, breathless.
Was it worth its weighty amount
Stamped on a page as
So am I ---

Does it equate to my aspirant
Are the two delicate things enough,
Do you enjoy the unquickening
Of us?

The silence after haunts your
Gorse, as its silken strands
Suffocate your thicket
Of Conquests.

(5)

I see them writhe
In silent screams ---
Her and I, her and I
A mote of improbablilities
Suited for the occasion.

A marriage of destinies
And she, I ---
Wearing delicate
Betrayed innocences,
Papery nakedness,
Sorrowful stillness.

Curtailed otherwise by
Stony nobility;
A Death ---
Slides by the sides of
Your rigid heart,
Oh, History.

Defeat led me to you,
Red and brazen;
A toxic enormity
Floating in your atmospheric
Lungs, and I ---

A miniscule particle
Saying goodbye.

I leave out this window
Framing the fair sky
To become a cloud ---
Daring to try.

The scream had awoken me
Suffocating the stream of
Rantings I tried to hide.

I relished in that last supper,
You opposite I ---
We consumed all but
Our bones.

And there I went
Scarred, annunciated one
Full of unanswerables.

The present is left behind;
The world can marry it ---
Its opening will be my
Ring of finality
Closing in on
Paths narrowing.

And I will expand as
The world shrinks
As meaning
Absolves me,
Awakening to its essence ---
A rapture of mourning.


              -----


     Inspired by these poems:

              ' A Secret '
              ' A Birthday Present '
              ' The Rabbit Catcher '
              ' The Applicant '

                            - By Sylvia Plath