Sculptor by Sylvia Plath
To his house the bodiless Come to barter endlessly Vision, wisdom, for bodies Palpable as his, and weighty. Hands moving move priestlier Than priest’s hands, invoke no vain Images of light and air But sure stations in bronze, wood, stone. Obdurate, in dense-grained wood, A bald angel blocks and shapes The flimsy light; arms folded […]
Rhyme by Sylvia Plath
I’ve got a stubborn goose whose gut’s Honeycombed with golden eggs, Yet won’t lay one. She, addled in her goose-wit, struts The barnyard like those taloned hags Who ogle men And crimp their wrinkles in a grin, Jangling their great money bags. While I eat grits She fattens on the finest grain. Now, as I […]
Resolve by Sylvia Plath
Day of mist: day of tarnish with hands unserviceable, I wait for the milk van the one-eared cat laps its gray paw and the coal fire burns outside, the little hedge leaves are become quite yellow a milk-film blurs the empty bottles on the windowsill no glory descends two water drops poise on the arched […]
Recantation by Sylvia Plath
‘Tea leaves I’ve given up, And that crooked line On the queen’s palm Is no more my concern. On my black pilgrimage This moon-pocked crystal ball Will break before it help; Rather than croak out What’s to come, My darling ravens are flown. ‘Forswear those freezing tricks of sight And all else I’ve taught Against […]
Purdah by Sylvia Plath
Jade – Stone of the side, The antagonized Side of green Adam, I Smile, cross-legged, Enigmatical, Shifting my clarities. So valuable! How the sun polishes this shoulder! And should The moon, my Indefatigable cousin Rise, with her cancerous pallors, Dragging trees – Little bushy polyps, Little nets, My visibilities hide. I gleam like a mirror. […]
Prospect by Sylvia Plath
Among orange-tile rooftops and chimney pots the fen fog slips, gray as rats, while on spotted branch of the sycamore two black rooks hunch and darkly glare, watching for night, with absinthe eye cocked on the lone, late, passer-by. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic […]
Poems, Potatoes by Sylvia Plath
The word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous, In establishments which imagined lines Can only haunt. Sturdy as potatoes, Stones, without conscience, word and line endure, Given an inch. Not that they’re gross (although Afterthought often would have them alter To delicacy, to poise) but that they Shortchange me continuously: […]
Pheasant by Sylvia Plath
You said you would kill it this morning. Do not kill it. It startles me still, The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing Through the uncut grass on the elm’s hill. It is something to own a pheasant, Or just to be visited at all. I am not mystical: it isn’t As if I […]
Parliament Hill Fields by Sylvia Plath
On this bald hill the new year hones its edge. Faceless and pale as china The round sky goes on minding its business. Your absence is inconspicuous; Nobody can tell what I lack. Gulls have threaded the river’s mud bed back To this crest of grass. Inland, they argue, Settling and stirring like blown paper […]
Spider by Sylvia Plath
Anansi, black busybody of the folktales, You scuttle out on impulse Blunt in self-interest As a sledge hammer, as a man’s bunched fist, Yet of devils the cleverest To get your carousals told: You spun the cosmic web: you squint from center field. Last summer I came upon your Spanish cousin, Notable robber baron, Behind […]
Sow by Sylvia Plath
God knows how our neighbor managed to breed His great sow: Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid In the same way He kept the sow-impounded from public stare, Prize ribbon and pig show. But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour Through his lantern-lit Maze of barns to the lintel of […]
Southern Sunrise by Sylvia Plath
Color of lemon, mango, peach, These storybook villas Still dream behind Shutters, thier balconies Fine as hand- Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower pen-sketch. Tilting with the winds, On arrowy stems, Pineapple-barked, A green crescent of palms Sends up its forked Firework of fronds. A quartz-clear dawn Inch by bright inch Gilds all our Avenue, And […]
Sculptor by Sylvia Plath
To his house the bodiless Come to barter endlessly Vision, wisdom, for bodies Palpable as his, and weighty. Hands moving move priestlier Than priest’s hands, invoke no vain Images of light and air But sure stations in bronze, wood, stone. Obdurate, in dense-grained wood, A bald angel blocks and shapes The flimsy light; arms folded […]
Rhyme by Sylvia Plath
I’ve got a stubborn goose whose gut’s Honeycombed with golden eggs, Yet won’t lay one. She, addled in her goose-wit, struts The barnyard like those taloned hags Who ogle men And crimp their wrinkles in a grin, Jangling their great money bags. While I eat grits She fattens on the finest grain. Now, as I […]
Resolve by Sylvia Plath
Day of mist: day of tarnish with hands unserviceable, I wait for the milk van the one-eared cat laps its gray paw and the coal fire burns outside, the little hedge leaves are become quite yellow a milk-film blurs the empty bottles on the windowsill no glory descends two water drops poise on the arched […]
Recantation by Sylvia Plath
‘Tea leaves I’ve given up, And that crooked line On the queen’s palm Is no more my concern. On my black pilgrimage This moon-pocked crystal ball Will break before it help; Rather than croak out What’s to come, My darling ravens are flown. ‘Forswear those freezing tricks of sight And all else I’ve taught Against […]
Purdah by Sylvia Plath
Jade – Stone of the side, The antagonized Side of green Adam, I Smile, cross-legged, Enigmatical, Shifting my clarities. So valuable! How the sun polishes this shoulder! And should The moon, my Indefatigable cousin Rise, with her cancerous pallors, Dragging trees – Little bushy polyps, Little nets, My visibilities hide. I gleam like a mirror. […]
Prospect by Sylvia Plath
Among orange-tile rooftops and chimney pots the fen fog slips, gray as rats, while on spotted branch of the sycamore two black rooks hunch and darkly glare, watching for night, with absinthe eye cocked on the lone, late, passer-by. ————— The End And that’s the End of the Poem © Poetry Monster, 2021. Poems by topic […]
Poems, Potatoes by Sylvia Plath
The word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous, In establishments which imagined lines Can only haunt. Sturdy as potatoes, Stones, without conscience, word and line endure, Given an inch. Not that they’re gross (although Afterthought often would have them alter To delicacy, to poise) but that they Shortchange me continuously: […]
Pheasant by Sylvia Plath
You said you would kill it this morning. Do not kill it. It startles me still, The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing Through the uncut grass on the elm’s hill. It is something to own a pheasant, Or just to be visited at all. I am not mystical: it isn’t As if I […]
Parliament Hill Fields by Sylvia Plath
On this bald hill the new year hones its edge. Faceless and pale as china The round sky goes on minding its business. Your absence is inconspicuous; Nobody can tell what I lack. Gulls have threaded the river’s mud bed back To this crest of grass. Inland, they argue, Settling and stirring like blown paper […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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, […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]