The Collected Poems

by Sylvia Plath

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

Last summer’s reeds are all engraved in ice as is your image in my eye;

what solace can be struck from rock to make heart’s waste grow green again? Who’d walk in this bleak place?

Just how guilty are we when the ceiling reveals no cracks that can be decoded?

can our dreams ever blur the intransigent lines which draw the shape that shuts us in?

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.

scorched by red sun we heft globed flint, racked in veins’ barbed bindings; brave love, dream not of staunching such strict flame, but come, lean to my wound; burn on, burn on.

Sheen of the noon sun striking Took my heart as if It were a green-tipped leaf Kindled by my love’s pleasing Into an ardent blazing.

And so, together, talking, Through Sunday’s honey-air We walked (and still walk there— Out of the sun’s bruising) Till the night mists came rising.

I Know you appear Vivid at my side, Denying you sprang out of my head, Claiming you feel Love fiery enough to prove flesh real, Though it’s quite clear All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear, From me.