Cactus Glandiflorus or Cereus

Nymph! not for thee the radiant day returns,

Nymph! not for thee the golden solstice burns,

Refulgent CEREA!-at the dusky hour

She seeks with pensive step the mountain-bower

Bright as the blush of rising morn, and warms

The dull cold eye of Midnight with her charms

There to the skies she lifts her pencill'd brows,

Opes her fair lips, and breathes her virgin vows;

Eyes the white zenith; counts the suns, that roll

Their distant fires, and blaze around the Pole;

Or marks where Jove directs his glittering car

D'er Heaven's blue vault, Herself a brighter star

-There as soft zephyrs sweep with pausing airs

Thy snowy neck, and part thy shadowy hairs,

Sweet Maid of Night! to Cynthia's sober beams

Glows thy warm cheek, polish'd bosom gleams.

In crowds around thee gaze the admiring swains,

And guard in silence the enchanted plains;

Drop the still tear, or breathe the impassion'd sigh

And drink the inebriate rapture from thine eye.

mother and child, father and daughter, husband and wife.

The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,

its cheekbones flushed with an afterworld favoritism

Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes;

hair waving, mouth parted in mid-speech like drowned Ophelia.

I have fallen a long way. I lie at the bottom, smashed

like a dinner plate against kitchen tile, china chips and jagged bits.

I lie at the bottom, shattered and dangerous, looking up

with a baby's stunned engrossment. I'm moving closer to Pluto and Mars.

Clouds are flowering blue and mystical over the face of the stars,—

It will not be quick. Death drinks me in, slow as syrup.

-excerpt from "The Moon And The Yew Tree" by Sylvia Plath