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Sylvia Path

The document contains four poems by Sylvia Plath: 'Morning Song', 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus', and 'Daddy'. The poems explore themes of motherhood, death, and Plath's complex relationship with her father.

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49 views10 pages

Sylvia Path

The document contains four poems by Sylvia Plath: 'Morning Song', 'Daddy', 'Lady Lazarus', and 'Daddy'. The poems explore themes of motherhood, death, and Plath's complex relationship with her father.

Uploaded by

Bilingual Capricon
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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POETRY FOUNDATION

Morning Song
BY  S Y L V I A P L A T H

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.


The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry   
Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.


In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother


Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath


Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral


In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
Daddy
BY  S Y L V I A P L A T H

You do not do, you do not do   


Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot   
For thirty years, poor and white,   
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.   


You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,   
Ghastly statue with one gray toe   
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic   


Where it pours bean green over blue   
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.   
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town   


Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.   
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen or two.   
So I never could tell where you   
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.   


Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.   
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.   
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna   


Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck   
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,


With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.   
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a swastika


So black no sky could squeak through.   
Every woman adores a Fascist,   
The boot in the face, the brute   
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,   


In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot   
But no less a devil for that, no not   
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.


I was ten when they buried you.   
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,   


And they stuck me together with glue.   
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.   


And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,   
The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——


The vampire who said he was you   
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart   


And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.   
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

Lady Lazarus
BY  S Y L V I A P L A T H

I have done it again.   


One year in every ten   
I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin   


Bright as a Nazi lampshade,   
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine   
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin   


O my enemy.   
Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?   


The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh


The grave cave ate will be   
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.   


I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.   


What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.   
The peanut-crunching crowd   
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——


The big strip tease.   
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands   


My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.   


The first time it happened I was ten.   
It was an accident.

The second time I meant


To last it out and not come back at all.   
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.   
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.   


I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.


It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.   
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day


To the same place, the same face, the same brute   
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.   
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge   


For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge   


For a word or a touch   
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.   
So, so, Herr Doktor.   
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,   
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.   


I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,   
A wedding ring,   
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer   


Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash


I rise with my red hair   
And I eat men like air.

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