In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legsIn their dreams their brains took each other hostageIn the morning they wore each other’s face

The Hawk in the Rain by Ted Hughes I drown in the drumming ploughland, I drag upHeel after heel from the swallowing of the earth’s mouth,From clay that clutches my each step to the ankleWith the habit of the dogged grave, but the hawk Effortlessly at height hangs his still eye.His wings hold all creation in a weightless quiet,Steady as a hallucination in the streaming air.While banging wind kills these stubborn hedges,

Thumbs my eyes, throws my breath, tackles my heart,And rain hacks my head to the bone, the hawk hangsThe diamond point of will that polestarsThe sea drowner’s endurance: and I, Bloodily grabbed dazed last-moment-countingMorsel in the earth’s mouth, strain towards the master-Fulcrum of violence where the hawk hangs still,That maybe in his own time meets the weather Coming from the wrong way, suffers the air, hurled upside down,Fall from his eye, the ponderous shires crash on him,The horizon traps him; the round angelic eyeSmashed, mix his heart’s blood with the mire of the land.

Black Rook In Rainy Weather By Sylvia Plath

On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain. I do not expect a miracle Or an accident

To set the sight on fire In my eye, nor seek Any more in the desultory weather some design, But let spotted leaves fall as they fall, Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then -- Thus hallowing an interval Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor, One might say love. At any rate, I now walk Wary (for it could happen Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical, Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook Ordering its black feathers can so shine As to seize my senses, haul My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fearOf total neutrality. With luck, Trekking stubborn through this seasonOf fatigue, I shallPatch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,If you care to call those spasmodicTricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,The long wait for the angel,For that rare, random descent.

Waking in the Blueby Robert LowellThe night attendant, a B.U. sophomore,rouses from the mare’s-nest of his drowsy headpropped on The Meaning of Meaning.He catwalks down our corridor.Azure daymakes my agonized blue window bleaker.Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.Absence! My heart grows tenseas though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.(This is the house for the “mentally ill.”)

What use is my sense of humor?I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties,once a Harvard all-American fullback,(if such were possible!)still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties,as he soaks, a ramrodwith the muscle of a sealin his long tub,vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.A kingly granite profile in a crimson golf-cap,worn all day, all night,he thinks only of his figure,of slimming on sherbet and ginger ale–more cut off from words than a seal.

This is way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean’s;the hooded night lights bring out “Bobbie,”Porcelain ’29,a replica of Louis XVIwithout the wig–redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale,as he swashbuckles about in his birthday suitand horses at chairs.In between the limits of day,hours and hours go by under the crew haircutsand slightly too little nonsensical bachelor wrinkleof the Roman Catholic attendants.(There are no Mayflowerscrewballs in the Catholic Church.)

After a hearty New England breakfast,I weigh two hundred poundsthis morning. Cock of the walk,I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jerseybefore the metal shaving mirrors,and see the shaky future grow familiarin the pinched, indigenous facesof these thoroughbred mental cases,twice my age and half my weight.We are all old-timers,each of us holds a locked razor.

Robert Lowell

Miss Drake Proceeds to SupperSylvia Plath (1956)

No noviceIn those elaborate ritualsWhich allay the maliceOf knotted table and crooked chair,The new woman in the wardWears purple, steps carefullyAmong her secret combinations of eggshellsAnd breakable hummingbirds,Footing sallow as a mouseBetween the cabbage-rosesWhich are slowly opening their furred petalsTo devour and drag her downInto the carpet's design.

With bid-quick eyed cocked askewShe can see in the nick of timeHow perilous needles grain the floorboardsAnd outwit their brambled plan;Now through her ambushed air,Adazzle with bright shardsOf broken glass,She edges with wary breath,Fending off jag and tooth,Until, turning sideways,She lifts one webbed foot after the otherInto the still, sultry weatherOf the patients' dining room.

Sheep In Fog

The hills step off into whiteness.People or starsRegard me sadly, I disappoint them.

The train leaves a line of breath.O slowHorse the colour of rust,

Hooves, dolorous bells -All morning theMorning has been blackening,

A flower left out.My bones hold a stillness, the farFields melt my heart.

They threatenTo let me through to a heavenStarless and fatherless, a dark water.

Plath and Woolf