Owl by Sylvia Plath
Clocks belled twelve. Main street showed otherwise Than its suburb of woods : nimbus– Lit, but unpeopled, held its windows Of wedding pastries, Diamond rings, potted roses, fox-skins Ruddy on the wax mannequins In a glassed tableau of affluence. From deep-sunk basements What moved the pale, raptorial owl Then, to squall above the level Of […]
Ouija by Sylvia Plath
It is a chilly god, a god of shades, Rises to the glass from his black fathoms. At the window, those unborn, those undone Assemble with the frail paleness of moths, An envious phosphorescence in their wings. Vermillions, bronzes, colors of the sun In the coal fire will not wholly console them. Imagine their deep […]
Night Shift by Sylvia Plath
It was not a heart, beating. That muted boom, that clangor Far off, not blood in the ears Drumming up and fever To impose on the evening. The noise came from outside: A metal detonating Native, evidently, to These stilled suburbs nobody Startled at it, though the sound Shook the ground with its pounding. It […]
Natural History by Sylvia Plath
That lofty monarch, Monarch Mind, Blue-blooded in coarse contry reigned; Though he bedded in ermine, gorged on roast, Pure Philosophy his love engrossed: While subjects hungered, empty-pursed, With stars, with angels, he conversed Till, sick of their ruler’s godling airs, In one body thsoe earthborn commoners Rose up and put royal nerves to the rack: […]
Mystic by Sylvia Plath
The air is a mill of hooks – Questions without answer, Glittering and drunk as flies Whose kiss stings unbearably In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer. I remember The dead smell of sun on wood cabins, The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets. Once one has seen God, […]
Owl by Sylvia Plath
Clocks belled twelve. Main street showed otherwise Than its suburb of woods : nimbus– Lit, but unpeopled, held its windows Of wedding pastries, Diamond rings, potted roses, fox-skins Ruddy on the wax mannequins In a glassed tableau of affluence. From deep-sunk basements What moved the pale, raptorial owl Then, to squall above the level Of […]
Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath
Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air. Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room. Soft fists insist on Heaving the needles, The leafy bedding, Even the paving. Our hammers, our rams, Earless and eyeless, Perfectly voiceless, Widen the crannies, […]
Ouija by Sylvia Plath
It is a chilly god, a god of shades, Rises to the glass from his black fathoms. At the window, those unborn, those undone Assemble with the frail paleness of moths, An envious phosphorescence in their wings. Vermillions, bronzes, colors of the sun In the coal fire will not wholly console them. Imagine their deep […]
Morning Song by Sylvia Plath
Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I’m no more your mother Than the cloud […]
Night Shift by Sylvia Plath
It was not a heart, beating. That muted boom, that clangor Far off, not blood in the ears Drumming up and fever To impose on the evening. The noise came from outside: A metal detonating Native, evidently, to These stilled suburbs nobody Startled at it, though the sound Shook the ground with its pounding. It […]
Moonrise by Sylvia Plath
Grub-white mulberries redden among leaves. I’ll go out and sit in white like they do, Doing nothing. July’s juice rounds their nubs. This park is fleshed with idiot petals. White catalpa flowers tower, topple, Cast a round white shadow in their dying. A pigeon rudders down. It’s fantail’s white Vocation enough: opening, shutting White petals, […]
Natural History by Sylvia Plath
That lofty monarch, Monarch Mind, Blue-blooded in coarse contry reigned; Though he bedded in ermine, gorged on roast, Pure Philosophy his love engrossed: While subjects hungered, empty-pursed, With stars, with angels, he conversed Till, sick of their ruler’s godling airs, In one body thsoe earthborn commoners Rose up and put royal nerves to the rack: […]
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful ‘ The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have […]
Mystic by Sylvia Plath
The air is a mill of hooks – Questions without answer, Glittering and drunk as flies Whose kiss stings unbearably In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer. I remember The dead smell of sun on wood cabins, The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets. Once one has seen God, […]
Midsummer Mobile by Sylvia Plath
Begin by dipping your brush into clear light. Then syncopate a sky of Dufy-blue With tilted spars of sloops revolved by white Gulls in a feathered fugue of wings. Outdo Seurat: fleck schooner flanks with sun and set A tremolo of turquoise quivering in The tessellated wave. Now nimbly let A tinsel pizzicato on fish […]
Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath
Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air. Nobody sees us, Stops us, betrays us; The small grains make room. Soft fists insist on Heaving the needles, The leafy bedding, Even the paving. Our hammers, our rams, Earless and eyeless, Perfectly voiceless, Widen the crannies, […]
Metaphors by Sylvia Plath
I’m a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising. Money’s new-minted in this fat purse. I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I’ve eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train […]
Morning Song by Sylvia Plath
Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I’m no more your mother Than the cloud […]
Medusa by Sylvia Plath
Off that landspit of stony mouth-plugs, Eyes rolled by white sticks, Ears cupping the sea’s incoherences, You house your unnerving head-God-ball, Lens of mercies, Your stooges Plying their wild cells in my keel’s shadow, Pushing by like hearts, Red stigmata at the very center, Riding the rip tide to the nearest point of departure, Dragging […]
Moonrise by Sylvia Plath
Grub-white mulberries redden among leaves. I’ll go out and sit in white like they do, Doing nothing. July’s juice rounds their nubs. This park is fleshed with idiot petals. White catalpa flowers tower, topple, Cast a round white shadow in their dying. A pigeon rudders down. It’s fantail’s white Vocation enough: opening, shutting White petals, […]
Medallion by Sylvia Plath
By the gate with star and moon Worked into the peeled orange wood The bronze snake lay in the sun Inert as a shoelace; dead But pliable still, his jaw Unhinged and his grin crooked, Tongue a rose-colored arrow. Over my hand I hung him. His little vermilion eye Ignited with a glassed flame As […]
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful ‘ The eye of a little god, four-cornered. Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. It is pink, with speckles. I have […]
Maudlin by Sylvia Plath
Mud-mattressed under the sign of the hag In a clench of blood, the sleep-talking virgin Gibbets with her curse the moon’s man, Faggot-bearing Jack in his crackless egg : Hatched with a claret hogshead to swig He kings it, navel-knit to no groan, But at the price of a pin-stitched skin Fish-tailed girls purchase each […]
Midsummer Mobile by Sylvia Plath
Begin by dipping your brush into clear light. Then syncopate a sky of Dufy-blue With tilted spars of sloops revolved by white Gulls in a feathered fugue of wings. Outdo Seurat: fleck schooner flanks with sun and set A tremolo of turquoise quivering in The tessellated wave. Now nimbly let A tinsel pizzicato on fish […]
Magnolia Shoals by Sylvia Plath
Up here among the gull cries we stroll through a maze of pale red-mottled relics, shells, claws as if it were summer still. That season has turned its back. Through the green sea gardens stall, bow, and recover their look of the imperishable gardens in an antique book or tapestries on a wall, leaves behind […]
Metaphors by Sylvia Plath
I’m a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loaf’s big with its yeasty rising. Money’s new-minted in this fat purse. I’m a means, a stage, a cow in calf. I’ve eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train […]
Magi by Sylvia Plath
The abstracts hover like dull angels: Nothing so vulgar as a nose or an eye Bossing the ethereal blanks of their face-ovals. Their whiteness bears no relation to laundry, Snow, chalk or suchlike. They’re The real thing, all right: the Good, the True . . . Salutary and pure as boiled water, Loveless as the […]
Medusa by Sylvia Plath
Off that landspit of stony mouth-plugs, Eyes rolled by white sticks, Ears cupping the sea’s incoherences, You house your unnerving head-God-ball, Lens of mercies, Your stooges Plying their wild cells in my keel’s shadow, Pushing by like hearts, Red stigmata at the very center, Riding the rip tide to the nearest point of departure, Dragging […]
Maenad by Sylvia Plath
Once I was ordinary: Sat by my father’s bean tree Eating the fingers of wisdom. The birds made milk. When it thundered I hid under a flat stone. The mother of mouths didn’t love me. The old man shrank to a doll. O I am too big to go backward: Birdmilk is feathers, The bean […]
Medallion by Sylvia Plath
By the gate with star and moon Worked into the peeled orange wood The bronze snake lay in the sun Inert as a shoelace; dead But pliable still, his jaw Unhinged and his grin crooked, Tongue a rose-colored arrow. Over my hand I hung him. His little vermilion eye Ignited with a glassed flame As […]
Lyonnesse by Sylvia Plath
No use whistling for Lyonnesse! Sea-cold, sea-cold it certainly is. Take a look at the white, high berg on his forehead- There’s where it sunk. The blue, green, Gray, indeterminate gilt Sea of his eyes washing over it And a round bubble Popping upward from the mouths of bells People and cows. The Lyonians had […]
Maudlin by Sylvia Plath
Mud-mattressed under the sign of the hag In a clench of blood, the sleep-talking virgin Gibbets with her curse the moon’s man, Faggot-bearing Jack in his crackless egg : Hatched with a claret hogshead to swig He kings it, navel-knit to no groan, But at the price of a pin-stitched skin Fish-tailed girls purchase each […]
Lorelei by Sylvia Plath
It is no night to drown in: A full moon, river lapsing Black beneath bland mirror-sheen, The blue water-mists dropping Scrim after scrim like fishnets Though fishermen are sleeping, The massive castle turrets Doubling themselves in a glass All stillness. Yet these shapes float Up toward me, troubling the face Of quiet. From the nadir […]
Magnolia Shoals by Sylvia Plath
Up here among the gull cries we stroll through a maze of pale red-mottled relics, shells, claws as if it were summer still. That season has turned its back. Through the green sea gardens stall, bow, and recover their look of the imperishable gardens in an antique book or tapestries on a wall, leaves behind […]
Little Fugue by Sylvia Plath
The yew’s black fingers wag: Cold clouds go over. So the deaf and dumb Signal the blind, and are ignored. I like black statements. The featurelessness of that cloud, now! White as an eye all over! The eye of the blind pianist At my table on the ship. He felt for his food. His fingers […]
Magi by Sylvia Plath
The abstracts hover like dull angels: Nothing so vulgar as a nose or an eye Bossing the ethereal blanks of their face-ovals. Their whiteness bears no relation to laundry, Snow, chalk or suchlike. They’re The real thing, all right: the Good, the True . . . Salutary and pure as boiled water, Loveless as the […]
Maenad by Sylvia Plath
Once I was ordinary: Sat by my father’s bean tree Eating the fingers of wisdom. The birds made milk. When it thundered I hid under a flat stone. The mother of mouths didn’t love me. The old man shrank to a doll. O I am too big to go backward: Birdmilk is feathers, The bean […]
Lyonnesse by Sylvia Plath
No use whistling for Lyonnesse! Sea-cold, sea-cold it certainly is. Take a look at the white, high berg on his forehead- There’s where it sunk. The blue, green, Gray, indeterminate gilt Sea of his eyes washing over it And a round bubble Popping upward from the mouths of bells People and cows. The Lyonians had […]
Lorelei by Sylvia Plath
It is no night to drown in: A full moon, river lapsing Black beneath bland mirror-sheen, The blue water-mists dropping Scrim after scrim like fishnets Though fishermen are sleeping, The massive castle turrets Doubling themselves in a glass All stillness. Yet these shapes float Up toward me, troubling the face Of quiet. From the nadir […]
Little Fugue by Sylvia Plath
The yew’s black fingers wag: Cold clouds go over. So the deaf and dumb Signal the blind, and are ignored. I like black statements. The featurelessness of that cloud, now! White as an eye all over! The eye of the blind pianist At my table on the ship. He felt for his food. His fingers […]