A Lesson In Vengeance by Sylvia Plath
In the dour ages Of drafty cells and draftier castles, Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables, Saint and king unfisted obstruction’s knuckles By no miracle or majestic means, But by such abuses As smack of spite and the overscrupulous Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews, One white horse drowned, and all […]
Leaving Early by Sylvia Plath
Lady, your room is lousy with flowers. When you kick me out, that’s what I’ll remember, Me, sitting here bored as a loepard In your jungle of wine-bottle lamps, Velvet pillows the color of blood pudding And the white china flying fish from Italy. I forget you, hearing the cut flowers Sipping their liquids from […]
Last Words by Sylvia Plath
I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus With tigery stripes, and a face on it Round as the moon, to stare up. I want to be looking at them when they come Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots. I see them already – the pale, star-distance faces. Now they are […]
Landowners by Sylvia Plath
From my rented attic with no earth To call my own except the air-motes, I malign the leaden perspective Of identical gray brick houses, Orange roof-tiles, orange chimney pots, And see that first house, as if between Mirrors, engendering a spectral Corridor of inane replicas, Flimsily peopled. But landowners Own thier cabbage roots, a space […]
Insolent Storm Strikes At The Skull by Sylvia Plath
Insolent storm strikes at the skull, assaults the sleeping citadel, knocking the warden to his knees in impotence, to sue for peace, while wantonly amused by this, wind wakes the whole metropolis. Skeptic cyclones try the bone of strict and sacred skeleton; polemic gales prove point by point how flesh cleaves fast to frozen joint, […]
In Plaster by Sylvia Plath
I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now: This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one, And the white person is certainly the superior one. She doesn’t need food, she is one of the real saints. At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality – She […]
In Midas’ Country by Sylvia Plath
Meadows of gold dust. The silver Currents of the Connecticut fan And meander in bland pleatings under River-verge farms where rye-heads whiten. All’s polished to a dull luster In the sulfurous noon. We move With the languor of idols below The sky’s great bell glass and briefly engrave Our limbs’ image on a field of […]
Go Get The Goodly Squab by Sylvia Plath
Go get the goodly squab in gold-lobed corn And pluck the droll-flecked quail where thick they lie; Reap the round blue pigeon from roof ridge, But let the fast-feathered eagle fly. Let the fast-feathered eagle fly And the skies crack through with thunder; Hide, hide, in the deep nest Lest the lightning strike you to […]
For A Fatherless Son by Sylvia Plath
You will be aware of an absence, presently, Growing beside you, like a tree, A death tree, color gone, an Australian gum tree — Balding, gelded by lightning-an illusion, And a sky like a pig’s backside, an utter lack of attention. But right now you are dumb. And I love your stupidity, The blind mirror […]
Flute Notes From A Reedy Pond by Sylvia Plath
Now coldness comes sifting down, layer after layer, To our bower at the lily root. Overhead the old umbrellas of summer Wither like pithless hands. There is little shelter. Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blank Dominion. The stars are no nearer. Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drink The liquor of indolence, and all […]
Faun by Sylvia Plath
Haunched like a faun, he hooed From grove of moon-glint and fen-frost Until all owls in the twigged forest Flapped black to look and brood On the call this man made. No sound but a drunken coot Lurching home along river bank. Stars hung water-sunk, so a rank Of double star-eyes lit Boughs where those […]
Family Reunion by Sylvia Plath
Outside in the street I hear A car door slam; voices coming near; Incoherent scraps of talk And high heels clicking up the walk; The doorbell rends the noonday heat With copper claws; A second’s pause. The dull drums of my pulses beat Against a silence wearing thin. The door now opens from within. Oh, […]
Fable Of The Rhododendron Stealers by Sylvia Plath
I walked the unwalked garden of rose-beds In the public park; at home felt the want Of a single rose present to imagine The garden’s remainder in full paint. The stone lion-head set in the wall Let drop its spittle of sluggish green Into the stone basin. I snipped An orange bud, pocketed it. When […]
Epitaph In Three Parts by Sylvia Plath
(1) Rocking across the lapis lazuli sea comes a flock of bottle battleships each with a telegram addressed to me. ‘Destroy your mirror and avoid mishaps,’ chirps the first; ‘live on a silent island where the water blots out all footsteps.’ The second sings: ‘Receive no roving gallant who seeks to dally in the port […]
Epitaph For Fire And Flower by Sylvia Plath
You might as well haul up This wave’s green peak on wire To prevent fall, or anchor the fluent air In quartz, as crack your skull to keep These two most perishable lovers from the touch That will kindle angels’ envy, scorch and drop Their fond hearts charred as any match. Seek no stony camera-eye […]
Electra On Azalea Path by Sylvia Plath
The day you died I went into the dirt, Into the lightless hibernaculum Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard. It was good for twenty years, that wintering – As if you never existed, as if I came God-fathered into the world from my […]
Dream With Clam-Diggers by Sylvia Plath
This dream budded bright with leaves around the edges, Its clear air winnowed by angels; she was come Back to her early sea-town home Scathed, stained after tedious pilgrimages. Barefoot, she stood, in shock of that returning, Beside a neighbor’s house With shingles burnished as glass, Blinds lowered on that hot morning. No change met […]
Doom Of Exiles by Sylvia Plath
Now we, returning from the vaulted domes Of our colossal sleep, come home to find A tall metropolis of catacombs Erected down the gangways of our mind. Green alleys where we reveled have become The infernal haunt of demon dangers; Both seraph song and violins are dumb; Each clock tick consecrates the death of strangers […]
Dirge For A Joker by Sylvia Plath
Always in the middle of a kiss Came the profane stimulus to cough; Always from teh pulpit during service Leaned the devil prompting you to laugh. Behind mock-ceremony of your grief Lurked the burlesque instinct of the ham; You never altered your amused belief That life was a mere monumental sham. From the comic accident […]
Death & Co. by Sylvia Plath
Two, of course there are two. It seems perfectly natural now– The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded And balled¸ like Blake’s. Who exhibits The birthmarks that are his trademark– The scald scar of water, The nude Verdigris of the condor. I am red meat. His beak Claps sidewise: I am not […]
Crossing The Water by Sylvia Plath
Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people. Where do the black trees go that drink here? Their shadows must cover Canada. A little light is filtering from the water flowers. Their leaves do not wish us to hurry: They are round and flat and full of dark advice. Cold worlds shake from the oar. […]
Conversation Among The Ruins by Sylvia Plath
Through portico of my elegant house you stalk With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back. Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light Of your stormy eye, magic takes […]
Circus In Three Rings by Sylvia Plath
In the circus tent of a hurricane designed by a drunken god my extravagant heart blows up again in a rampage of champagne-colored rain and the fragments whir like a weather vane while the angels all applaud. Daring as death and debonair I invade my lion’s den; a rose of jeopardy flames in my hair […]
Child’s Park Stones by Sylvia Plath
In sunless air, under pines Green to the point of blackness, some Founding father set these lobed, warped stones To loom in the leaf-filtered gloom Black as the charred knuckle-bones Of a giant or extinct Animal, come from another Age, another planet surely. Flanked By the orange and fuchsia bonfire Of azaleas, sacrosanct These stones […]
“Célibataire” by Sylvia Plath
Or, cette jeune fille pointilleuse Lors d’une cérémonieuse promenade en avril Avec son dernier soupirant Fut soudain frappée, intolérablement, Par le brouhaha irrégulier des oiseaux Et par le désordre des feuilles Affligée par ce tumulte, elle Vit les gestes de son amoureux déséquilibrer l’air Sa démarche s’égarer, inégale A travers une rangée de fougères et […]
By Candlelight by Sylvia Plath
This is winter, this is night, small love – A sort of black horsehair, A rough, dumb country stuff Steeled with the sheen Of what green stars can make it to our gate. I hold you on my arm. It is very late. The dull bells tongue the hour. The mirror floats us at one […]
Burning The Letters by Sylvia Plath
I made a fire; being tired Of the white fists of old Letters and their death rattle When I came too close to the wastebasket What did they know that I didn’t? Grain by grain, they unrolled Sands where a dream of clear water Grinned like a getaway car. I am not subtle Love, love, […]
Bluebeard by Sylvia Plath
I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard’s study; because he would make love to me I am sending back the key; in his eye’s darkroom I can see my X-rayed heart, dissected body : I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard’s study. ————— The End […]
Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath
Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries, Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly, A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes Ebon in the hedges, fat With blue-red juices. […]
Black Rook In Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath
On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain- I do not expect a miracle Or an accident To set the sight on fire In my eye, nor seek Any more in the desultory weather some design, But let spotted leaves fall as they fall […]
Black Pine Tree In An Orange Light by Sylvia Plath
Tell me what you see in it : The pine tree like a Rorschach-blot black against the orange light : Plant an orange pumpkin patch which at twelve will quaintly hatch nine black mice with ebon coach, or walk into the orange and make a devil’s cataract of black obscure god’s eye with corkscrew fleck; […]
Battle-Scene From the Comic Operatic Fantasy The Seafarer by Sylvia Plath
It beguiles- This little Odyssey In pink and lavender Over a surface of gently- Graded turquoise tiles That represent a sea With chequered waves and gaily Bear up the seafarer, Gaily, gaily, In his pink plume and armor. A lantern-frail Gondola of paper Ferries the fishpond Sindbad Who poises his pastel spear Toward three pinky-purple […]
Balloons by Sylvia Plath
Since Christmas they have lived with us, Guileless and clear, Oval soul-animals, Taking up half the space, Moving and rubbing on the silk Invisible air drifts, Giving a shriek and pop When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling. Yellow cathead, blue fish—- Such queer moons we live with Instead of dead furniture! Straw mats, […]
Ariel by Sylvia Plath
Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God’s lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees! –The furrow Splits and passes, sister to The brown arc Of the neck I cannot catch, Nigger-eye Berries cast dark Hooks — Black sweet blood mouthfuls, Shadows. Something else Hauls me through […]
Apprehensions by Sylvia Plath
There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself- Infinite, green, utterly untouchable. Angels swim in it, and the stars, in indifference also. They are my medium. The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights. A grey wall now, clawed and bloody. Is there no way out of the mind? Steps at […]
An Appearance by Sylvia Plath
The smile of iceboxes annihilates me. Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one! I hear her great heart purr. From her lips ampersands and percent signs Exit like kisses. It is Monday in her mind: morals Launder and present themselves. What am I to make of these contradictions? I wear white cuffs, […]
Amnesiac by Sylvia Plath
No use, no use, now, begging Recognize! There is nothing to do with such a beautiful blank but smooth it. Name, house, car keys, The little toy wife- Erased, sigh, sigh. Four babies and a cocker! Nurses the size of worms and a minute doctor Tuck him in. Old happenings Peel from his skin. Down […]
All The Dead Dears by Sylvia Plath
Rigged poker -stiff on her back With a granite grin This antique museum-cased lady Lies, companioned by the gimcrack Relics of a mouse and a shrew That battened for a day on her ankle-bone. These three, unmasked now, bear Dry witness To the gross eating game We’d wink at if we didn’t hear Stars grinding, […]
Aftermath by Sylvia Plath
Compelled by calamity’s magnet They loiter and stare as if the house Burnt-out were theirs, or as if they thought Some scandal might any minute ooze From a smoke-choked closet into light; No deaths, no prodigious injuries Glut these hunters after an old meat, Blood-spoor of the austere tragedies. Mother Medea in a green smock […]
Admonition by Sylvia Plath
If you dissect a bird To diagram the tongue You’ll cut the chord Articulating song. If you flay a beast To marvel at the mane You’ll wreck the rest From which the fur began. If you pluck out the heart To find what makes it move, You’ll halt the clock That syncopates our love. ————— […]