Evening Poem

After Sylvia Plath.
Translated from her Morning Song.


Hate dissolved my coming, like a thin silver gaze.
My first husband kissed my palms, and my wiry voice
gave a home to his metals.

Our signals muffle, shrinking your coming. Old doll
in a stale gallery, your clothing
illuminates our danger. We sit square as boards.

Your yes less your father.
The sky sprays a matt to block your fast
revelation for water's fingers.

All day my chrysalis-exhalation
is inert among the thin grey snowdrops. You sleep to speak.
A near river freezes over your eye.

Twelve yells, and you dance from a chair,
lamb-light & grassy in your pagan day-gown.
My eye opens blurred as a bat's. The door-oblong

blackens and vomits bright moons. And now I give in
to my footfall tunes.
Contorted consonants sink like ships.