Question

Could you please tell me who/ what is the persona and who/what it is talking about?

I got the idea of a snake and a spider but the two together don't make much sense in the context.

I would really appreciate a fast rerply!

"Eve" - by James Lasdun

I like that room,

the warm one with the machines

where the woman folds her shed skins.



I hang in the broken ceiling, watching her,

barely distinguishable

from the cold water pipe

and the coiled power cable.



I watch her all winter:

her long-legged hands,

the glinting needles of fur at her nape,

her red warmness

drifting in mammaly billows.



And now I show myself;

pour my flickering head

into her sac of air,

and slowly, willed against her own will,

her face rises like a rising moon,

opening palely to mine,



and in the wide O's of her eyes,

I see myself: my head like a big cut jewel,

the little watch-jewels of my eyes, yes,

my tongue the alive nerve of a rock,

and I feel her want,

a yearning almost,

as though for something already about to be lost,



And I offer myself.

Answer 1

The allusion, of course, is to Eve in the garden of Eden and the snake.

The room the poem refers to is the laundry room... shed skins = cloths.

The "snake" of the Bible story has had many suggestions for meaning. I have always thought of it as "self knowledge", curiosity, learning. A possible interpretation might be that while the woman is doing her laundry ( which is a very boring task) she is day dreaming about potential, life, adventure.