Snakecharmer

As the gods began one world, and man another,

So the snakecharmer begins a snaky sphere

With moon-eye, mouth-pipe. He pipes. Pipes green. Pipes water.

Pipes water green until green waters waver

With reedy lengths and necks and undulatings.

And as his notes twine green, the green river

Shapes its images around his songs.

He pipes a place to stand on, but no rocks,

No floor: a wave of flickering grass tongues

Supports his foot. He pipes a world of snakes,

Of sways and coilings, from the snake-rooted bottom

Of his mind. And now nothing but snakes

Is visible. The snake-scales have become

Leaf, become eyelid; snake-bodies, bough, breast

Of tree and human. And he within this snakedom

Rules the writhings which make manifest

His snakehood and his might with pliant tunes

From his thin pipe. Out of this green nest

As out of Eden's navel twist the lines

Of snaky generations: let there be snakes!

And snakes there were, are, will be--till yawns

Consume this piper and he tires of music

And pipes the world back to the simple fabric

Of snake-warp, snake-weft. Pipes the cloth of snakes

To a melting of green waters, till no snake

Shows its head, and those green waters back to

Water, to green, to nothing like a snake.

Puts up his pipe, and lids his moony eye.

(1957)

Sylvia Plath