The Rival If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating. Both of you are great light borrowers. Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected, And your first gift is making stone out of everything. I wake to a mausoleum; you are here, Ticking your fingers on the marble table, looking for cigarettes, Spiteful as a woman, but not so nervous, And dying to say something unanswerable. The moon, too, abases her subjects But in the daytime she is ridiculous. Your dissatisfactions, on the other hand, Arrive through the mailslot with loving regularity, White and blank, expansive as carbon monoxide. No day is safe from news of you, Walking about in Africa maybe, but thinking of me. by Sylvia Plath | | Ariel Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. Gods 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 air --- Thighs, hair; Flakes from my heels. White Godiva, I unpeel --- Dead hands, dead stringencies. And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The childs cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies, Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning. by Sylvia Plath | | On Looking Into The Eyes Of A Demon Lover Here are two pupils whose moons of black transform to cripples all who look: each lovely lady who peers inside take on the body of a toad. Within these mirrors the world inverts: the fond admirers burning darts turn back to injure the thrusting hand and inflame to danger the scarlet wound. I sought my image in the scorching glass, for what fire could damage a witchs face? So I stared in that furnace where beauties char but found radiant Venus reflected there. by Sylvia Plath | | Jilted My thoughts are crabbed and sallow, My tears like vinegar, Or the bitter blinking yellow Of an acetic star. Tonight the caustic wind, love, Gossips late and soon, And I wear the wry-faced pucker of The sour lemon moon. While like an early summer plum, Puny, green, and tart, Droops upon its wizened stem My lean, unripened heart. by Sylvia Plath | | Strumpet Song With white frost gone And all green dreams not worth much, After a lean days work Time comes round for that foul slut: Mere bruit of her takes our street Until every man, Red, pale or dark, Veers to her slouch. Mark, I cry, that mouth Made to do violence on, That seamed face Askew with blotch, dint, scar Struck by each dour year. Walks there not some such one man As can spare breath To patch with brand of love this rank grimace Which out from black tarn, ditch and cup Into my most chaste own eyes Looks up. by Sylvia Plath | | Marys Song The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat. The fat Sacrifices its opacity. . . . A window, holy gold. The fire makes it precious, The same fire Melting the tallow heretics, Ousting the Jews. Their thick palls float Over the cicatrix of Poland, burnt-out Germany. They do not die. Grey birds obsess my heart, Mouth-ash, ash of eye. They settle. On the high Precipice That emptied one man into space The ovens glowed like heavens, incandescent. It is a heart, This holocaust I walk in, O golden child the world will kill and eat. by Sylvia Plath | | Stillborn These poems do not live: its a sad diagnosis. They grew their toes and fingers well enough, Their little foreheads bulged with concentration. If they missed out on walking about like people It wasnt for any lack of mother-love. O I cannot explain what happened to them! They are proper in shape and number and every part. They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid! They smile and smile and smile at me. And still the lungs wont fill and the heart wont start. They are not pigs, they are not even fish, Though they have a piggy and a fishy air -- It would be better if they were alive, and thats what they were. But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction, And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her. by Sylvia Plath | | Faun 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 owls sat. An arena of yellow eyes Watched the changing shape he cut, Saw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout Goat-horns. Marked how god rose And galloped woodward in that guise. by Sylvia Plath | | Full Fathom Five Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them,--ding-dong, bell. by Sylvia Plath | | Winter Landscape With Rooks Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone, plunges headlong into that black pond where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind which hungers to haul the white reflection down. The austere sun descends above the fen, an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look longer on this landscape of chagrin; feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook, brooding as the winter night comes on. Last summers reeds are all engraved in ice as is your image in my eye; dry frost glazes the window of my hurt; what solace can be struck from rock to make hearts waste grow green again? Whod walk in this bleak place? by Sylvia Plath | | Kindness Kindness glides about my house. Dame Kindness, she is so nice! The blue and red jewels of her rings smoke In the windows, the mirrors Are filling with smiles. What is so real as the cry of a child? A rabbits cry may be wilder But it has no soul. Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says. Sugar is a necessary fluid, Its crystals a little poultice. O kindness, kindness Sweetly picking up pieces! My Japanese silks, desperate butterflies, May be pinned any minute, anesthetized. And here you come, with a cup of tea Wreathed in steam. The blood jet is poetry, There is no stopping it. You hand me two children, two roses. by Sylvia Plath | | Metaphors Im a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This loafs big with its yeasty rising. Moneys new-minted in this fat purse. Im a means, a stage, a cow in calf. Ive eaten a bag of green apples, Boarded the train theres no getting off. by Sylvia Plath | | Mushrooms 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 foots in the door. by Sylvia Plath | | Resolve 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 green stem of my neighbors rose bush o bent bow of thorns the cat unsheathes its claws the world turns today today I will not disenchant my twelve black-gowned examiners or bunch my fist in the winds sneer. by Sylvia Plath | | The Queens Complaint In ruck and quibble of courtfolk This giant hulked, I tell you, on her scene With hands like derricks, Looks fierce and black as rooks; Why, all the windows broke when he stalked in. Her dainty acres he ramped through And used her gentle doves with manners rude; I do not know What fury urged him slay Her antelope who meant him naught but good. She spoke most chiding in his ear Till he some pity took upon her crying; Of rich attire He made her shoulders bare And solaced her, but quit her at cocks crowing. A hundred heralds she sent out To summon in her slight all doughty men Whose force might fit Shape of her sleep, her thought- None of that greenhorn lot matched her bright crown. So she is come to this rare pass Whereby she treks in blood through sun and squall And sings you thus : How sad, alas, it is To see my people shrunk so small, so small. Terms and Conditions | Privacy Stateme
Posted on: Tue, 13 Jan 2015 07:01:54 +0000
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