A Response Poem-Crossing The Water

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem based on the Plath Poetry Project’s calendar. Simply pick a poem from the calendar, and then write a poem that responds or engages with your chosen Plath poem in some way.

The poem by Sylvia Plath – Crossing the Water is what I have selected. In this poem Plath continues her recent obsession with the color black. Black being my favorite colour but of course for different reasons, I am sharing a poem I wrote some time back.

It’s my perception of Black. I have tried to engage and respond to Plath’s dichotomy of dark and light in all of us, but on a not-so-serious tone. 

 

BLACK

A mysterious colour so unknown

It’s a part of me and within my soul

consuming me at times

till I open my windows

To stream some light

I like it more on my outside though

Covering my circumference

To a leaner glow

And for compliments

that I adore;

when I embrace you

Outside my core.

It absorbs me, it fills

On it’s own wit and will.

 

A mysterious colour so unknown

What happens inside a Black hole ?

Or Black money found at every pole ?

Few colourless – blackmail some souls

Is the night only black ? ! I am doubtful though.

Why then that day was called a black day

When humanity wore a cold colour

To see red – to end some lives

Oh for which colour do we fight ?

 

Black is mystery beyond our thoughts

Close your eyes to feel it within

Rub them closed to see the phosphenes

C’mon be intuitive – it’s in your genes

Black has a lot to offer

Only if you could reach

It holds within a different promise

See if you could unleash.

 

Preeti S Manaktala

 

You could read the original poem here – http://www.internal.org/Sylvia_Plath/Crossing_the_Water