Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue   
Pour of tor and distances.

God’s lioness,   
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to   
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye   
Berries cast dark   
Hooks—

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,   
Shadows.
Something else

Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.

White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.   
The child’s cry

Melts in the wall.   
And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive   
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

The poem is called Ariel. It constantly refers to death and outright says that she is suicidal. The poem also talks about shadows, maybe referring to the depression and dark thoughts that are going on in her mind. It also talks about something pulling her out, hauling her through the air.

It talks a lot about death that it might be to someone else’s point of view reading it, might be a suicide note or in this case a poem. It talks about death with dead hands and dead stringency. The dead stringency she might be referring to might be feeling like something is closing in on her, or something tightening on her. She refers to herself as an arrow that does the job to kill. It also refers to a child’s wail melting into a wall. I think it is trying to convey that when a child or her child sees that she has killed herself that the child will start crying and that it will be heard by others, and the others will see as well. She also write “the cauldron of morning” probably meaning that she is going to commit suicide sometime it the morning before anyone else is wake so they will find her body and not be able to stop her from committing suicide.