The Collected Poems

by Sylvia Plath

With such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate, What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?

each day demands we create our whole world over, disguising the constant horror in a coat of many-colored fictions; we mask our past in the green of eden, pretend future’s shining fruit can sprout from the navel of this present waste.

in faith we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.

we freeze And marvel at the smashing nonchalance Of nature:

Now, free, by hazard’s quirk, from the common ill Knocking our brothers down, we strike a stance Most mock-heroic, to cloak our waking awe At this rare rumpus which no man can control: Meek and proud both fall;

To keep some unsaid pact; perhaps concern Is helpless here, quite extra, yet we must make The gesture, bend and hold the prone man’s head.