Words, by Sylvia Plath

Axes

After whose stroke the wood rings,

And the echoes!

Echoes travelling

Off from the centre like horses.

The sap

Wells like tears, like the

Water striving

To re-establish its mirror

Over the rock

That drops and turns,

A white skull,

Eaten by weedy greens.

Years later I

Encounter them on the road--

Words dry and riderless,

The indefatigable hoof-taps.

While

From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars

Govern a life.

From “Ariel” by Sylvia Plath (HarperCollins: 96 pp., $10)