Two Sisters
of Persephone
Two girls
there are: within the house
One sits; the other, without.
Daylong a duet of shade and light
Plays between these.
In her dark
wainscoted room
The first works problems on
A mathematical machine.
Dry ticks mark time
As she calculates each sum.
At this barren enterprise
Rat-shrewd go her squint eyes,
Root-pale her meager frame.
Bronzed as
earth, the second lies,
Hearing ticks blown gold
Like pollen on bright air. Lulled
Near a bed of poppies,
She sees
how their red silk flare
Of petaled blood
Burns open to the sun's blade.
On that green alter
Freely
become sun's bride, the latter
Grows quick with seed.
Grass-couched in her labor's pride,
She bears a king. Turned bitter
And sallow
as any lemon,
The other, wry virgin to the last,
Goes graveward with flesh laid waste,
Worm-husbanded, yet no woman.
Sylvia Plath (1956)