The Colossus and Other Poems Quotes

“Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.

--from "Poem For A Birthday - The Stones", written 1959”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“My hours are married to shadow.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“The Eye-Mote

Blameless as daylight I stood looking
At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown,
Tails streaming against the green
Backdrop of sycamores. Sun was striking
White chapel pinnacles over the roofs,
Holding the horses, the clouds, the leaves

Steadily rooted though they were all flowing
Away to the left like reeds in a sea
When the splinter flew in and stuck my eye,
Needling it dark. Then I was seeing
A melding of shapes in a hot rain:
Horses warped on the altering green,

Outlandish as double-humped camels or unicorns,
Grazing at the margins of a bad monochrome,
Beasts of oasis, a better time.
Abrading my lid, the small grain burns:
Red cinder around which I myself,
Horses, planets and spires revolve.

Neither tears nor the easing flush
Of eyebaths can unseat the speck:
It sticks, and it has stuck a week.
I wear the present itch for flesh,
Blind to what will be and what was.
I dream that I am Oedipus.

What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind.

--written 1959”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“Speak in sign language of a lost otherworld, A world we lose by merely waking up.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,
They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,
Faces blank as the day I was born,
Their shadows long in the setting sun
That never brightens or goes down.
And this is the kingdom you bore me to,
Mother, mother. But no frown of mine
Will betray the company I keep.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“The great bronze gate began to crack,
The sea broke in at every crack,
Pellmell, blueblack.

--from "The Bull of Bendylaw", written 1959”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“Worse Even than your maddening Song, your silence.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“What happens between us Happens in darkness, vanishes Easy and often as each breath.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“Thirty years now I have laboured to dredge the slit from your throat. I am none the wiser.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus

“Farther out, the waves will be mouthing icecakes— A poor month for park-sleepers and lovers. Even our shadows are blue with cold. We wanted to see the sun come up And are met, instead, by this iceribbed ship, Bearded and blown, an albatross of frost, Relic of tough weather, every winch and stay Encased in a glassy pellicle. The”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“Tireless, tied, as a moon-bound sea
Moves

--from "Hardcastle Crags", written 1957”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“On Fridays the little children come To trade their hooks for hands. Dead men leave eyes for others. Love is the uniform of my bald nurse. Love is the bone and sinew of my curse. The vase, reconstructed, houses The elusive rose. Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows. My mendings itch. There is nothing to do. I shall be good as new.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“The Stones This is the city where men are mended. I lie on a great anvil. The flat blue sky-circle Flew off like the hat of a doll When I fell out of the light. I entered The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard. The mother of pestles diminished me. I became a still pebble. The stones of the belly were peaceable, The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“Sun struck the water like a damnation. No pit of shadow to crawl into, And his blood beating the old tattoo I am, I am, I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“Enough to snuff the quick Of her small heat out, but before the weight Of stones and hills of stones could break Her down to mere quartz grit in that stony light She turned back.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“The figs on the fig tree in the yard are green;
Green, also, the grapes on the green vine
Shading the brick red porch tiles.
The money’s run out.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“the incessant seethe of grasses”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“Of the ear, old worrier. Water mollifies the flint lip, And daylight lays its sameness on the wall. The grafters are cheerful, Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers. A current agitates the wires Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures. A workman walks by carrying a pink torso. The storerooms are full of hearts. This is the city of spare parts. My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber. Here they can doctor heads, or any limb.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“Only the mouth-hole piped out, Importunate cricket In a quarry of silences. The people of the city heard it. They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate, The mouth-hole crying their locations. Drunk as a fetus I suck at the paps of darkness. The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens away. The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry Open one stone eye. This is the after-hell: I see the light. A wind unstoppers the chamber”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems

“The queen bee marries the winter of your year.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“Mornings dissipate in somnolence.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“Mother, you sent me to piano lessons
And praised my arabesques and trills
Although each teacher found my touch
Oddly wooden in spite of scales
And the hours of practicing, my ear
Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable.
I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere,
From muses unhired by you, dear mother,

I woke one day to see you, mother,
Floating above me in bluest air
On a green balloon bright with a million
Flowers and bluebirds that never were
Never, never, found anywhere.
But the little planet bobbed away
Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here!
And I faced my traveling companions.

Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,
They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,
Faces blank as the day I was born,
Their shadows long in the setting sun

That never brightens or goes down.
And this is the kingdom you bore me to,
Mother, mother. But no frown of mine
Will betray the company I keep.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“All obscurity
Starts with a danger:

Your dangers are many. I
Cannot look much but your form suffers
Some strange injury

And seems to die: so vapors
Ravel to clearness on the dawn sea.
The muddy rumors

Of your burial move me
To half-believe: your reappearance
Proves rumors shallow,”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“What I want back is what I was
Before the bed, before the knife,
Before the brooch-pin and the salve
Fixed me in this parenthesis;
Horses fluent in the wind,
A place, a time gone out of mind.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands
Of the death's-head shadowing their song.
These Flemish lovers flourish; not for long.

Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right-hand corner.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus and Other Poems

“Love is the bone and sinew of my curse. The vase, reconstructed, houses The elusive rose.
Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows. My mendings itch. There is nothing to do. I shall be good as new.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Colossus: and Other Poems