Elm For Ruth Fainlight-A poem by Sylvia Plath

 

The title of this poem is Elm. The subtitle addresses it to Ruth Fainlight. The line I like most in this poem is the last line. These are the isolate slow faults that kill, that kill, that kill. Without truly understanding what exactly are the slow faults that kill, I understood. The insensitivity of this world slowly kills. Unkind words slowly kill. This poem is written from the point of view of the elm tree. It conjures the image of an elm tree exposed to the elements. Rain. Moon. Wind. Sunsets. 

The tap root of the tree knows the bottom. The bottom is something to be afraid of. But Ruth Fainlight is not afraid. The sound of the sea is heard in the elm. 

Or is it the voice of nothing?

Love is compared to a shadow that you lie and cry after. 

Sylvia Plath compares love to a horse with hooves that gallops.

This is interesting because the horse is a war animal. War is antithetical to love. Yet love is compared to all things equine.

Love has hooves like a horse.

All night love gallops 

The sound of it makes your head into a stone and your pillow into a turf.

The elm tree wants to know if it should bring the sound of poison. 

This is rain now. The rain is a silence. 

The fruit of the rain is tin white like arsenic. 

Sunsets scorch the elm tree. The wind causes the elm tree to shriek. The radiance of the moon scorns the elm tree. These are the slow faults that slowly kill the elm tree. 

The tree image is intensified with words and phrases like tap root, fruit, branches and the violence and darkness is emphasised with words like fear, madness, hooves, poison, arsenic, scorch, atrocity, violence, shriek, merciless, radical surgery, malignity, murderous, and snaky acids.