Dark Wood, Dark Water
Dark Wood, Dark Water - meaning Summary
Autumnal Forest Transmutation
Plath’s poem registers a late-autumn woodland as a small, intense laboratory of transmutation. Rich, tactile images—moss, snails, fish, pewter roots—turn decay into metal, light and coinlike reflections. Time is present but unstated, implied by seasonal detail and the hourglass
sift of particles. The voice observes without didacticism, converting ordinary natural elements into symbols of change, value and quiet, ongoing dissolution.
This wood burns a dark Incense. Pale moss drips In elbow-scarves, beards From the archaic Bones of the great trees. Blue mists move over A lake thick with fish. Snails scroll the border Of the glazed water With coils of ram's-horn. Out in the open Down there the late year Hammers her rare and Various metals. Old pewter roots twist Up from the jet-backed Mirror of water And while the air's clear Hourglass sifts a Drift of goldpieces Bright waterlights are Sliding their quoits one After the other Down boles of the fir.
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