Sylvia Plath’s Poignant Nighttime Poem 🌙

This is winter, this is night, small love -- <br />A sort of black horsehair, <br />A rough, dumb country stuff <br />Steeled with the sheen <br />Of what green stars can make it to our gate. <br />I hold you on my arm. <br />It is very late. <br />The dull bells tongue the hour. <br />The mirror floats us at one candle power. <br /> <br />This is the fluid in which we meet each other, <br />This haloey radiance that seems to breathe <br />And lets our shadows wither <br />Only to blow <br />Them huge again, violent giants on the wall. <br />One match scratch makes you real. <br /> <br />At first the candle will not bloom at all -- <br />It snuffs its bud <br />To almost nothing, to a dull blue dud. <br /> <br />I hold my breath until you creak to life, <br />Balled hedgehog, <br />Small and cross. The yellow knife <br />Grows tall. You clutch your bars. <br />My singing makes you roar. <br />I rock you like a boat <br />Across the Indian carpet, the cold floor, <br />While the brass man <br />Kneels, back bent, as best he can <br /> <br />Hefting his white pillar with the light <br />That keeps the sky at bay, <br />The sack of black! It is everywhere, tight, tight! <br />He is yours, the little brassy Atlas -- <br />Poor heirloom, all you have, <br />At his heels a pile of five brass cannonballs, <br />No child, no wife. <br />Five balls! Five bright brass balls! <br />To juggle with, my love, when the sky falls.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/by-candlelight/