I haven't wanted to keep up with my blog recently. It is too hot outside to think clearly and it's all I can do to keep my head from exploding because of my pregnancy hormones. So I have decided that instead of letting my blog die, I will post poems or songs that have some meaning in my life.
Today I have been thinking about The Night Dances by Sylvia Plath. Maybe it's cliche to like Sylvia Plath and be a feminist but I really do love her poetry. I love all of her work, not just her most famous feminist poems Daddy and Lady Lazurus.
Anyway, I have been thinking about Night Dances because this poem paints the way I imagine my daughter to be. As I feel her leap and spiral in my uterus, I hope that she will be like a comet, lighting up the dark world around her.
The Night Dances
A smile fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!
And how will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?
Such pure leaps and spirals ----
Surely they travel
The world forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift
Of your small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.
Their flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,
and the tiger, embellishing itself ----
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.
The comets
Have such a space to cross,
Such coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off ----
Warm and human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling
Through the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given
These lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes
Six sided, white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair
Touching and melting.
Nowhere.
That's always been one of my favorite Plath poems.
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