By the gate with star and moon <br />Worked into the peeled orange wood <br />The bronze snake lay in the sun <br /> <br />Inert as a shoelace; dead <br />But pliable still, his jaw <br />Unhinged and his grin crooked, <br /> <br />Tongue a rose-colored arrow. <br />Over my hand I hung him. <br />His little vermilion eye <br /> <br />Ignited with a glassed flame <br />As I turned him in the light; <br />When I split a rock one time <br /> <br />The garnet bits burned like that. <br />Bust dulled his back to ocher <br />The way sun ruins a trout. <br /> <br />Yet his belly kept its fire <br />Going under the chainmail, <br />The old jewels smoldering there <br /> <br />In each opaque belly-scale: <br />Sunset looked at through milk glass. <br />And I saw white maggots coil <br /> <br />Thin as pins in the dark bruise <br />Where innards bulged as if <br />He were digesting a mouse. <br /> <br />Knifelike, he was chaste enough, <br />Pure death's-metal. The yard-man's <br />Flung brick perfected his laugh.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/medallion-4/
