Winter Trees Quotes

“I shall move north. I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither 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.”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“And so I stand, a little sightless. So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“Gee baby, you are rare.”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“It is the exception that interests the devil.”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O colour of distance and forgetfulness!”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“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.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.
I did not look. But still the face was there.”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“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?”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of.”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“O You who eat
People like light rays, leave
This one
Mirror safe, unredeemed
By the dove's annihilation,
The glory
The power, the glory.”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.

On their blotter of fog the trees

Seem a botanical drawing.

Memories growing, ring on ring,

A series of weddings.



Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery,

Truer than women,

They seed so effortlessly!

Tasting the winds, that are footless,

Waist-deep in history.



Full of wings, otherworldliness.

In this, they are Ledas.

O mother of leaves and sweetness

Who are these pietas?

The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but chasing nothing.”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees

“There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush. There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound they are letting go.
I leave my health behind. I leave someone
Who would adhere to me: I undo her fingers like bandages: I go.

(Three Women)”
― Sylvia Plath, Winter Trees