Cut
For Susan O'Neil Roe
by Sylvia Plath
What a thrill -
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man -
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump -
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
My thumb instead of an onion.
The top quite gone
Except for a sort of hinge
Of skin,
A flap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man -
The stain on your
Gauze Ku Klux Klan
Babushka
Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled
Pulp of your heart
Confronts its small
Mill of silence
How you jump -
Trepanned veteran,
Dirty girl,
Thumb stump.
The lines that stand out to me most are the second and the last relating to "thumb". There are so many references to methods of suicide here, but the second line compares the attempts and the last line the outcome...I think of a stump as a healed wound...and yet, we know, from Plath's history there were many attempts and many stumps. She was fascinated with death more than she was fascinated with life. The hours, lines, motifs spent contemplating death is an immaculate form of delay. She saw death everywhere...with so many possibilities. I remember reading the Bell Jar and how many lines of sight to suicide there were within the pages. This poem sums up pieces of the book so well, as does the majority of her poetry. It feels like "out of a gap, a million soldiers one, redcoats everyone" relates to the spilling of blood from the cut....oozing out, running out...in a betrayal of life. Her reference to homunculus is so interesting to me here- I have studies just pieces on the part of the brain that is the homunculus when learning about meditation and which parts of our body are more sensitive than others, but if you google homunculus you get a whole other strain of thoughts and references to early literature (a little human within a sperm- we are little copies of ourselves). I am not quite sure what she means, but totally look up homunculus- I need to get a better grasp on the subject and now that I have just seen that they make sensory homunculus statues- I just may need to get one of those too!!!
ReplyDeleteSensory Homunculus Statue- how awesomely creepy are these :) showing the parts of our body where we are most sensitive. Makes you want to change how you approach the subject of lovemaking- start at the hands, lips and ears?!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/search?q=homunculus+statue&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi_h-jRkKzdAhUll1QKHVJ1B7wQ_AUItAMoAQ&biw=1200&bih=629#imgrc=HQOnvM_WQb411M:&spf=1536434658938