Blue Moles
1
They're out
of the dark's ragbag, these two
Moles dead
in the pebbled rut,
Shapeless
as flung gloves, a few feet apart ---
Blue suede
a dog or fox has chewed.
One, by
himself, seemed pitiable enough,
Little
victim unearthed by some large creature
From his orbit under the elm root.
The second
carcass makes a duel of the affair:
Blind twins bitten by bad nature.
The sky's
far dome is sane and clear.
Leaves,
undoing their yellow caves
Between the
road and the lake water,
Bare no
sinister spaces. Already
The moles
look neutral as the stones.
Their
corkscrew noses, their white hands
Uplifted,
stiffen in a family pose.
Difficult
to imagine how fury struck ---
Dissolved
now, smoke of an old war.
2
Nightly the
battle-shouts start up
In the ear
of the veteran, and again
I enter the
soft pelt of the mole.
Light's
death to them: they shrivel in it.
They move
through their mute rooms while I sleep,
Palming the
earth aside, grubbers
After the fat children of root and rock.
By day,
only the topsoil heaves.
Down there
one is alone.
Outsize
hands prepare a path,
They go
before: opening the veins,
Delving for
the appendages
Of beetles,
sweetbreads, shards -- to be eaten
Over and over. And still the heaven
Of final
surfeit is just as far
From the door as ever. What happens between us
Happens in
darkness, vanishes
Easy and often as each breath.
Sylvia Plath (1960)