he baby to a statue in a drafty museum, a naked statue somehow threatening the safety of the viewers, who are reduced to the role of walls. We have the sense that the grown-ups, especially the mother/poet, are helpless in the face of such a strange creature as a newborn baby. And the next stanza emphasizes the alienation the mother/poet feels: "I'm no more your mother/ Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow/ Effacement at the wind's hand" (Plath 7-9). Not only do we receive the image of a mother alienated from her newborn child, we also receive the clear impression once again that the mother feels threatened by the baby, in danger of being "effaced" by its strange power.
The images of alienation and the voice of watchful fear, even dread, continue. The baby has "moth-breath" and wakes the mother who hears a "far sea" in her ear (Plath 10;12). "One cry" from the baby brings the mothe
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