A Secret

A secret! A secret!
How superior.
You are blue and huge, a traffic policeman,
Holding up one palm -

A difference between us?
I have one eye, you have two.
The secret is stamped on you,
Faint, undulant watermark.

Will it show in the black detector?
Will it come out
Wavery, indelible, true
Through the African giraffe in its Edeny greenery.

The Moroccan hippopotamus?
They stare from a square, stiff, stiff frill.
They are for export,
One a fool, the other a fool.

A secret...An extra amber
Brandy finger
Roosting and cooing "You, you"
Behind two eyes in which nothing is reflected but monkeys.

Sylvia Plath in Collected Poems