Collected Poems

by Sylvia Plath

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

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.

brave love, dream not of staunching such strict flame, but come, lean to my wound; burn on, burn on.