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An Elephant; a Ponderous House: Box Score by Sylvia Plath

These are dark times.

Marvin Gentry-USA TODAY Sports

Last August in our GBH Roundtable, cuppycup unwittingly anointed Sylvia Plath the official muse of our 2014 season when he speculated we would go 6-6. His dismal pessimism has now spread after a quick start to the year. Let's channel Sylvia and see what she'd have to say about today's game in Tuscaloosa.

3-0

The telegram says you have gone away And left our bankrupt circus on its town; There is nothing more for me to say. The maestro gives the singing birds their pay And they buy tickets for the tropic zone; The telegram says you have gone away.

10-0

O ransack the four winds and find another man who can mangle the grin of kings: the sting of bees took away my father who scorned the tick of the falling weather.

17-0

Arena dust rusted by four bulls' blood to a dull redness, The afternoon at a bad end under the crowd's truculence, The ritual death each time botched among dropped capes, ill-judged stabs, The strongest will seemed a will towards ceremony. Obese, dark- Faced in his rich yellows, tassels, pompons, braid, the picador

24-0

How far is it? There is mud on my feet, Thick, red and slipping. It is Adam's side, This earth I rise from, and I in agony. I cannot undo myself, and the train is steaming. Steaming and breathing, its teeth Ready to roll, like a devil's. There is a minute at the end of it A minute, a dewdrop. How far is it? It is so small The place I am getting to, why are there these obstacles ----

31-0

This red wall winces continually : A red fist, opening and closing, Two gray, papery bags--- This is what I am made of , this and a terror Of being wheeled off under crosses and a rain of pietas.

38-0

Again we are deluded and infer that somehow we are younger than we were.

45-0

In a pit of rock The sea sucks obsessively, One hollow the whole sea's pivot.

52-0

A monster of wood and rusty teeth. Fire smelted his eyes to lumps Of pale blue vitreous stuff, opaque As resin drops oozed from pine bark.

59-0

Puppets, loosed from the strings of the puppetmaster Wear masks of horn to bed. This is not death, it is something safer. The wingy myths won't tug at us anymore: