Worked into the peeled orange wood
The bronze snake lay in the sun
Inert as a shoelace; dead
But pliable still, his jaw
Unhinged and his grin crooked,
Tongue a rose-colored arrow.
Over my hand I hung him.
His little vermilion eye
Ignited with a glassed flame
As I turned him in the light;
When I split a rock one time
The garnet bits burned like that.
Bust dulled his back to ocher
The way sun ruins a trout.
Yet his belly kept its fire
Going under the chainmail,
The old jewels smoldering there
In each opaque belly-scale:
Sunset looked at through milk glass.
And I saw white maggots coil
Thin as pins in the dark bruise
Where innards bulged as if
He were digesting a mouse.
Knifelike, he was chaste enough,
Pure death's-metal. The yard-man's
Flung brick perfected his laugh.
by Sylvia Plath
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