This Dark Thing

"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 faces of love, those pale irretrievables?

Is it 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 kiss.

It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults

That kill, that kill, that kill.”

-

From the poem “Elm” by Sylvia Plath, 19 April 1962.

 

Lakefill, Northwestern. Evanston, IL.

 

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