Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath's poetry is not for everyone. She expresses a pain and a darkness throughout her poems that some will find displeasing and uncomfortable.She invokes imagery that can often be quite bone-chilling and always seems to twist my heart with her soul-felt words. Below are just a few of her poems, if you like them then at the bottom of the page are a few links to some fantastic sites with many more for you to enjoy. |
All of these poems can be found in "The Collected Poems--Sylvia Plath"
A smile
fell in the grass.
Irretrievable!
And how
will your night dances
Lose themselves. In mathematics?
Such pure
leaps and spirals -
Surely they travel
The world
forever, I shall not entirely
Sit emptied of beauties, the gift
Of your
small breath, the drenched grass
Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies.
Their
flesh bears no relation.
Cold folds of ego, the calla,
And the
tiger, embellishing itself -
Spots, and a spread of hot petals.
The comets
Have such a space to cross,
Such
coldness, forgetfulness.
So your gestures flake off -
Warm and
human, then their pink light
Bleeding and peeling
Through
the black amnesias of heaven.
Why am I given
These
lamps, these planets
Falling like blessings, like flakes
Six sided,
white
On my eyes, my lips, my hair
Touching
and melting.
Nowhere.
Even the
sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts.
Nor the woman in the ambulance
Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly --
A gift, a
love gift
Utterly unasked for
By a sky
Palely and
flamily
Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes
Dulled to a halt under bowlers.
O my God,
what am I
That these late mouths should cry open
In a forest of frost, in a dawn of cornflowers.
The wet
dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing.
Memories growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.
Knowing
neither abortions nor bitchery,
Truer than women,
They seed so effortlessly!
Tasting the winds, that are footless,
Waist-deep in history.
Full of
wings, otherworldliness.
In this, they are Ledas.
O mother of leaves and sweetness
Who are these pietas?
The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but chasing nothing.
This is the
light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is
no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky --
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.
The yew tree
points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness -
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have
fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and
silence.
I am
silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you 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 looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
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.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;
Stars open
among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.
"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,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on
water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or
nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are
shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers
and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall
by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door."
The woman is perfected.
Her dead
Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare
Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it --
A sort of
walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A
paperweight
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off
the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify? ----
The nose,
the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon
the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I am a
smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is
Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a
million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them
unwrap me hand and foot --
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies,
These are
my hands,
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless,
I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second
time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a
seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so
it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy
enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback
in a broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
"A
miracle!"
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the
eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart --
It really goes.
And there
is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece
of my hair or my clothes
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your
opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts
to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash
--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there. --
A cake of
soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God,
Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the
ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
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,
Pusshing by like hearts,
Red stigmata at the very center,
Riding the rip tide to the nearest point of departure,
Dragging
their Jesus hair.
Did I escape, I wonder?
My mind winds to you
Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable,
Keeping itself, it seems, in a state of miraculous repair.
In any
case, you are always there,
Tremulous breath at the end of my line,
Curve of water upleaping
To my water rod, dazzling and grateful,
Touching and sucking.
I didn't
call you.
I didn't call you at all.
Nevertheless, nevertheless
You steamed to me over the sea,
Fat and red, a placenta
Paralysing
the kicking lovers.
Cobra light
Squeezing the breath from blood bells
Of the fuscia. I could draw no breath,
Dead and moneyless,
Overexposed,
like an X-ray.
Who do you think you are?
A Communion wafer? Bluberry Mary?
I shall take no bite of your body,
Bottle in which I live,
Ghastly
Vatican.
I am sick to death of hot salt.
Green as eunuchs, your wishes
Hiss at my sins.
Off, off, eely tentacle!
There is nothing between us.
Grub-white
mulberries redden among leaves
I'll go out and sit in the 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. Its fan-tail's white.
Vocation enough: opening, shutting
White petals, white fan-tails, ten white fingers.
Enough for
fingernails to make half moons
Redden in white palms no labor reddens.
White bruises toward color, else collapses.
Berries
redden. A body of whiteness
Rots, and smells of rot under its headstone
Though the body walk out in clean linen.
I smell
that whiteness here, beneath the stones
Where small ants roll their eggs, where grubs fatten.
Death may whiten in sun or out of it.
Death
whitens in the egg and out of it.
I can see no color for this whiteness.
White: it is a complexion of the mind.
I tire,
imagining white Niagaras
Build up from a rock root, as fountains build
Against the weighty image of their fall.
Lucina,
bony mother, laboring
Among the socketed white stars, your face
Of candor pares white flesh to the white bone,
Who drag
our ancient father at the heel,
White-bearded, weary. The berries purple
And bleed. The white stomach may ripen yet.
You do not
do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
Daddy, I
have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal
And a head
in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
In the
German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there
are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
It stuck
in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
An engine,
an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
The snows
of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
I have
always been scared of *you*,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You---
Not God
but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
You stand
at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
Bit my
pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
But they
pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love
of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.
If I've
killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
and drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
There's a
stake in your fat, black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always *knew* it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
"I
shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars
go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed
that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God
topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied
you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should
have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"
Chip's Sylvia Plath Page (a great collection of poems and links)
Sylvia Plath (lots of great info: a short bio, poems, and links)
Poetic Conversations: Modernism (a bit on the influences in Plath's life)
Well, those should do you, they have enough links and articles there's no sense in me replicating it here.