Poem of the Week: Two Sisters of Persephone by Sylvia Plath
Two Sisters of Persephone
Sylvia Plath
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 squinted eyes,
Root-pale her meager frame.
Bronzed as earth, the second lies,
Hearing ticks brown 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 sun’s blade
On that green altar
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.
This poem was originally published in Poetry (January, 1957).
A damn good poem.
Mythic, raw, and visceral. This lyrical and dreamy poem charts an allusion to Greek mythology while balancing on a tightrope of duality between, perhaps, one woman. Transposed in a dilemma reflected with magnificence, this piece is stained with mood. I’m also quite partial to the line: “Of petaled blood,” which to me evokes a sense of monstrosity in a fairy tale-like setting.