Child

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate ---
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

-Sylvia Plath


The Night told me, "You must stop loving me. I am hurting you. You are dying."

"I can't stop," I said, "I don't want to."

"You have to. You will find silence, beauty and comfort in another place."

"There is no other place! I cannot take the glaring harshness of daylight. I cannot take the brightness, the utter exposure, the condemnation, without wanting to run away."

"But have you forgotten? The moon shines so brillantly in the dark only because it acquires light and strength from the sun."