The Applicant by Sylvia Plath
First, are you our sort of a person? Do you wear A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch, A brace or a hook, Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch, Stitches to show something’s missing? No, no? Then How can we give you a thing? Stop crying. Open your hand. Empty? Empty. Here is a […]
Suicide Off Egg Rock by Sylvia Plath
Behind him the hotdogs split and drizzled On the public grills, and the ochreous salt flats, Gas tanks, factory stacks- that landscape Of imperfections his bowels were part of- Rippled and pulsed in the glassy updraught. Sun struck the water like a damnation. No pit of shadow to crawl into, And his blood beating the […]
Stars Over The Dordogne by Sylvia Plath
Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy Picket of trees whose silhouette is darker Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless. The woods are a well. The stars drop silently. They seem large, yet they drop, and no gap is visible. Nor do they send up fires where they […]
Sonnet: To Time by Sylvia Plath
Today we move in jade and cease with garnet Amid the ticking jeweled clocks that mark Our years. Death comes in a casual steel car, yet We vaunt our days in neon and scorn the dark. But outside the diabolic steel of this Most plastic-windowed city, I can hear The lone wind raving in the […]
Sheep In Fog by Sylvia Plath
The hills step off into whiteness. People or stars Regard me sadly, I disappoint them. The train leaves a line of breath. O slow Horse the colour of rust, Hooves, dolorous bells – All morning the Morning has been blackening, A flower left out. My bones hold a stillness, the far Fields melt my heart. […]
Prologue To Spring by Sylvia Plath
The winter landscape hangs in balance now, Transfixed by glare of blue from gorgon’s eye; The skaters freese within a stone tableau. Air alters into glass and the whole sky Grows brittle as a tilted china bowl; Hill and valley stiffen row on row. Each fallen leaf is trapped by spell of steel, Crimped like […]
Poppies In July by Sylvia Plath
Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm? You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns And it exhausts me to watch you Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth. A mouth just bloodied. Little bloody skirts! There are fumes […]
Polly’s Tree by Sylvia Plath
A dream tree, Polly’s tree: a thicket of sticks, each speckled twig ending in a thin-paned leaf unlike any other on it or in a ghost flower flat as paper and of a color vaporish as frost-breath, more finical than any silk fan the Chinese ladies use to stir robin’s egg air. The silver – […]
On The Difficulty Of Conjuring Up A Dryad by Sylvia Plath
Ravening through the persistent bric-à-brac Of blunt pencils, rose-sprigged coffee cup, Postage stamps, stacked books’ clamor and yawp, Neighborhood cockcrow-all nature’s prodigal backtalk, The vaunting mind Snubs impromptu spiels of wind And wrestles to impose Its own order on what is. ‘With my fantasy alone,’ brags the importunate head, Arrogant among rook-tongued spaces, Sheep greens, […]
On The Decline Of Oracles by Sylvia Plath
My father kept a vaulted conch By two bronze bookends of ships in sail, And as I listened its cold teeth seethed With voices of that ambiguous sea Old Böcklin missed, who held a shell To hear the sea he could not hear. What the seashell spoke to his inner ear He knew, but no […]
Old Ladies’ Home by Sylvia Plath
Sharded in black, like beetles, Frail as antique earthenwear One breath might shiver to bits, The old women creep out here To sun on the rocks or prop Themselves up against the wall Whose stones keep a little heat. Needles knit in a bird-beaked Counterpoint to their voices: Sons, daughters, daughters and sons, Distant and […]
Ode For Ted by Sylvia Plath
From under the crunch of my man’s boot green oat-sprouts jut; he names a lapwing, starts rabbits in a rout legging it most nimble to sprigged hedge of bramble, stalks red fox, shrewd stoat. Loam-humps, he says, moles shunt up from delved worm-haunt; blue fur, moles have; hefting chalk-hulled flint he with rock splits open […]
New Year On Dartmoor by Sylvia Plath
This is newness : every little tawdry Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar, Glinting and clinking in a saint’s falsetto. Only you Don’t know what to make of the sudden slippiness, The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant. There’s no getting up it by the words you know. No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe. We […]
Mussel Hunter At Rock Harbor by Sylvia Plath
I came before the water — Colorists came to get the Good of the Cape light that scours Sand grit to sided crystal And buffs and sleeks the blunt hulls Of the three fishing smacks beached On the bank of the river’s Backtracking tail. I’d come for Free fish-bait: the blue mussels Clumped like bulbs […]
Metamorphoses Of The Moon by Sylvia Plath
Cold moons withdraw, refusing to come to terms with the pilot who dares all heaven’s harms to raid the zone where fate begins, flings silver gauntlet of his plane at space, demanding satisfaction; no duel takes place: the mute air merely thins and thins. Sky won’t be drawn closer: absolute, it holds aloof, a shrouded […]
Memoirs Of A Spinach-Picker by Sylvia Plath
They called the place Lookout Farm. Back then, the sun Didn’t go down in such a hurry. How it Lit things, that lamp of the Possible! Wet yet Lay over the leaves like a clear cellophane, A pane of dragonfly wing, when they left me With a hundred bushel baskets on the edge Of the […]
Man In Black by Sylvia Plath
Where the three magenta Breakwaters take the shove And suck of the grey sea To the left, and the wave Unfists against the dun Barb-wired headland of The Deer Island prison With its trim piggeries, Hen huts and cattle green To the right, and March ice Glazes the rock pools yet, Snuff-colored sand cliffs rise […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Wuthering Heights by Sylvia Plath
The horizons ring me like faggots, Tilted and disparate, and always unstable. Touched by a match, they might warm me, And their fine lines singe The air to orange Before the distances they pin evaporate, Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color. But they only dissolve and dissolve Like a series of promises, as […]
Words by Sylvia Plath
Axes After whose stroke the wood rings, And the echoes! Echoes traveling Off from the center like horses. The sap Wells like tears, like the Water striving To re-establish its mirror Over the rock That drops and turns, A white skull, Eaten by weedy greens. Years later I Encounter them on the road- Words dry […]
Witch Burning by Sylvia Plath
In the marketplace they are piling the dry sticks. A thicket of shadows is a poor coat. I inhabit The wax image of myself, a doll’s body. Sickness begins here: I am the dartboard for witches. Only the devil can eat the devil out. In the month of red leaves I climb to a bed […]