Poem by Sylvia Plath

Thalidomide

O half moon—-

Half-brain, luminosity—-
Negro, masked like a white,

Your dark
Amputations crawl and appall—-

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.

1. In Plaster
2. Black Pine Tree in an Orange Light
3. A Winter Ship
4. The Snowman on the Moor
5. Prologue to Spring

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