Ariel: The Restored Edition Read Free Page A

square
     
    Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
    Your handful of notes;
    The clear vowels rise like balloons.
     

The Couriers
     
     
    The word of a snail on the plate of a leaf?
    It is not mine. Do not accept it.
     
    Acetic acid in a sealed tin?
    Do not accept it. It is not genuine.
     
    A ring of gold with the sun in it?
    Lies. Lies and a grief.
     
    Frost on a leaf, the immaculate
    Cauldron, talking and crackling
     
    All to itself on the top of each
    Of nine black Alps,
     
    A disturbance in mirrors,
    The sea shattering its grey one——
     
    Love, love, my season.
     

The Rabbit Catcher
     
     
    It was a place of force——
    The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair,
    Tearing off my voice, and the sea
    Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead
    Unreeling in it, spreading like oil.
     
    I tasted the malignity of the gorse,
    Its black spikes,
    The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.
    They had an efficiency, a great beauty,
    And were extravagant, like torture.
     
    There was only one place to get to.
    Simmering, perfumed,
    The paths narrowed into the hollow.
    And the snares almost effaced themselves——
    Zeroes, shutting on nothing,
     
    Set close, like birth pangs.
    The absence of shrieks
    Made a hole in the hot day, a vacancy.
    The glassy light was a clear wall,
    The thickets quiet.
     
    I felt a still busyness, an intent.
    I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt,
    Ringing the white china.
    How they awaited him, those little deaths!
    They waited like sweethearts. They excited him.
     
    And we, too, had a relationship——
    Tight wires between us,
    Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring
    Sliding shut on some quick thing,
    The constriction killing me also.
     

Thalidomide
     
     
    O half moon—— 
     
    Half-brain, luminosity——
    Negro, masked like a white, 
     
    Your dark
    Amputations crawl and appal——
     
    Spidery, unsafe.
    What glove 
     
    What leatheriness
    Has protected 
     
    Me from that shadow——
    The indelible buds, 
     
    Knuckles at shoulder-blades, the
    Faces that
     
    Shove into being, dragging
    The lopped
     
    Blood-caul of absences.
    All night I carpenter
     
    A space for the thing I am given,
    A love
     
    Of two wet eyes and a screech.
    White spit 
     
    Of indifference!
    The dark fruits revolve and fall.
     
    The glass cracks across,
    The image
     
    Flees and aborts like dropped mercury 
     

The Applicant
     
     
    First, are you our sort of person?
    Do you wear
    A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
    A brace or a hook,
    Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
     
    Stitches to show somethings missing? No, no? Then
    How can we give you a thing?
    Stop crying.
    Open your hand.
    Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
     
    To fill it and willing
    To bring teacups and roll away headaches
    And do whatever you tell it.
    Will you marry it?
    It is guaranteed
     
    To thumb shut your eyes at the end
    And dissolve of sorrow.
    We make new stock from the salt.
    I notice you are stark naked.
    How about this suit
     
    Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
    Will you marry it?
    It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
    Against fire and bombs through the roof.
    Believe me, theyll bury you in it.
     
    Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
    I have the ticket for that.
    Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
    Well, what do you think of that ?
    Naked as paper to start
     
    But in twenty-five years shell be silver,
    In fifty, gold.
    A living doll, everywhere you look.
    It can sew, it can cook,
    It can talk, talk, talk.
     
    It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
    You have a hole, its a poultice.
    You have an eye, its an image.
    My boy, its your last resort.
    Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
     

Barren Woman
     
     
    Empty, I echo to the least footfall,
    Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas.
    In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself,
    Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies
    Exhale their pallor like scent.
     
    I