The Collected Poems

by Sylvia Plath

The cook had one wall eye and couldn’t sleep, she was so nervous. On trial, from Ireland, she burned batch after batch of cookies Till she was fired.

I see us floating there yet, inseparable—two cork dolls. What keyhole have we slipped through, what door has shut ? The shadows of the grasses inched round like hands of a clock, And from our opposite continents we wave and call. Everything has happened.

The moon’s concern is more personal: She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse. Is she sorry for what will happen? I do not think so. She is simply astonished at fertility.

And the man I work for laughed: ‘Have you seen something awful? You are so white, suddenly.’ And I said nothing. I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation. I could not believe it.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death. Again, this is a death. Is it the air, The particles of destruction I suck up ? Am I a pulse That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel ? Is this my lover then? This death, this death ? As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name. Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death ?

I wasn’t ready. The white clouds rearing Aside were dragging me in four directions. I wasn’t ready.

I have had my chances. I have tried and tried. I have stitched life into me like a rare organ, And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare. I have tried not to think too hard. I have tried to be natural.

It is these men I mind: They are so jealous of anything that is not flat! They are jealous gods That would have the whole world flat because they are. I see the Father conversing with the Son. Such flatness cannot but be holy. ‘Let us make a heaven,’ they say. ‘Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.’

I am dumb and brown. I am a seed about to break. The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen: It does not wish to be more, or different.

When will it be, the second when Time breaks And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

They are to blame for what I am, and they know it. They hug their flatness like a kind of health. And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did? They would go mad with it.

I am a garden of black and red agonies.

And now the world conceives Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love. It is a love of death that sickens everything. A dead sun stains the newsprint. It is red. I lose life after life. The dark earth drinks them.

The sun is down. I die. I make a death.

What did my fingers do before they held him? What did my heart do, with its love? I have never seen a thing so clear. His lids are like the lilac-flower And soft as a moth, his breath. I shall not let go. There is no guile or warp in him. May he keep so.

How winter fills my soul!

I shall move north. I shall move into a long blackness. I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman, Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack. I feel a lack. I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets. See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks. I cannot contain it. I cannot contain my life.

I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused. The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

These pure, small images. They smell of milk. Their footsoles are untouched. They are walkers of air.

He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant. One cry. It is the hook I hang on. And I am a river of milk.

The body is resourceful. The body of a starfish can grow back its arms And newts are prodigal in legs. And may I be As prodigal in what lacks me.

She is a small island, asleep and peaceful, And I am a white ship hooting: Goodbye, goodbye.

This woman who meets me in windows—she is neat. So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.

It is I. It is I — Tasting the bitterness between my teeth. The incalculable malice of the everyday.

It is a terrible thing To be so open: it is as if my heart Put on a face and walked into the world.

I hear the sound of the hours Widen and die in the hedgerows.

I do not believe in those terrible children Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands. They are not mine. They do not belong to me.

It is so beautiful to have no attachments! I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss? Shall I ever find it, whatever it is ?

The swans are gone. Still the river Remembers how white they were. It strives after them with its lights. It finds their shapes in a cloud.

I wait and ache. I think I have been healing. There is a great deal else to do. My hands Can stitch lace neatly on to this material. My husband Can turn and turn the pages of a book. And so we are at home together, after hours. It is only time that weighs upon our hands. It is only time, and that is not material.

I find myself again. I am no shadow Though there is a shadow starting from my feet. I am a wife. The city waits and aches. The little grasses

I survive the while, Arranging my morning.

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.

Stars open among the lilies. Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens ? This is the silence of astounded souls.

I am not mystical: it isn’t As if I thought it had a spirit. It is simply in its element. That gives it a kingliness, a right.

Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions ? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse. All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously, Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Echoing, echoing.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

It was a place of force— The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair, Tearing off my voice, and the sea Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead Unreeling in it, spreading like oil.

Where apple bloom ices the night I walk in a ring, A groove of old faults, deep and bitter.

We touch like cripples.

Limbs, images, shrieks. Behind the concrete bunkers Two lovers unstick themselves.

I am not a smile. These children are after something, with hooks and cries, And my heart too small to bandage their terrible faults.

Now the washed sheets fly in the sun, The pillow cases are sweetening. It is a blessing, it is a blessing: The long coffin of soap-colored oak, The curious bearers and the raw date Engraving itself in silver with marvelous calm.

Cold glass, how you insert yourself Between myself and myself. I scratch like a cat. The blood that runs is dark fruit — An effect, a cosmetic. You smile. No, it is not fatal.

Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm ? You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.

If I could bleed, or sleep!——— If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!

You will be aware of an absence, presently, Growing beside you, like a tree, A death tree, color gone,

But right now you are dumb. And I love your stupidity, The blind mirror of it. I look in And find no face but my own, and you think that’s funny.

I do not want much of a present, anyway, this year. After all I am alive only by accident.

If you only knew how the veils were killing my days. To you they are only transparencies, clear air. But my god, the clouds are like cotton. Armies of them. They are carbon monoxide.