Section: «Poems»
Verse (ancient Greek ὁ στίχος — row, structure), a term in versification used in several meanings:
artistic speech organized by division into rhythmically commensurate segments; poetry in the narrow sense; in particular, it implies the properties of versification of a particular tradition ("antique verse", "Akhmatova's verse", etc.);
a line of poetic text organized according to a certain rhythmic pattern ("My uncle of the most honest rules").
The Fearful
This man makes a pseudonymAnd crawls behind it like a worm.This woman on the telephoneSays she is a man, not a woman.The mask increases, eats the..
© Sylvia Plath
Stopped Dead
A squeal of brakes.Or is it a birth cry?And here we are, hung out over the dead dropUncle, pants factory Fatso, millionaire.And you out cold beside..
© Sylvia Plath
Circus in Three Rings
In the circus tent of a hurricanedesigned by a drunken godmy extravagant heart blows up againin a rampage of champagne-colored rainand the fragments..
© Sylvia Plath
Watercolor Of Grantchester Meadows
There, spring lambs jam the sheepfold. In airStilled, silvered as water in a glassNothing is big or far.The small shrew chitters from its..
© Sylvia Plath
Firesong
Born green we wereto this flawed garden,but in speckled thickets, warted as a toad,spitefully skulks our warden,fixing his snarewhich hauls down..
© Sylvia Plath
Hardcastle Crags
Flintlike, her feet struckSuch a racket of echoes from the steely street,Tacking in moon-blued crooks from the blackStone-built town, that she heard..
© Sylvia Plath
Dark Wood, Dark Water
This wood burns a darkIncense. Pale moss dripsIn elbow-scarves, beardsFrom the archaicBones of the great trees.Blue mists move overA lake thick with..
© Sylvia Plath
The Goring
Arena dust rusted by four bulls' blood to a dull redness,The afternoon at a bad end under the crowd's truculence,The ritual death each time botched..
© Sylvia Plath
Point Shirley
From Water-Tower Hill to the brick prisonThe shingle booms, bickering underThe sea's collapse.Snowcakes break and welter. This yearThe gritted wave..
© Sylvia Plath
The Babysitters
It is ten years, now, since we rowed to Children's Island.The sun flamed straight down that noon on the water off Marblehead.That summer we wore..
© Sylvia Plath
The Manor Garden
The fountains are dry and the roses over.Incense of death. Your day approaches.The pears fatten like little buddhas.A blue mist is dragging the..
© Sylvia Plath
Little Fugue
The yew's black fingers wag:Cold clouds go over.So the deaf and dumbSignal the blind, and are ignored.I like black statements.The featurelessness of..
© Sylvia Plath
Widow
Widow. The word consumes itself —-Body, a sheet of newsprint on the fireLevitating a numb minute in the updraftOver the scalding, red topographyThat..
© Sylvia Plath
The Shrike
When night comes blackSuch royal dreams beckon this manAs lift him apartFrom his earth-wife's sideTo wing, sleep-feathered,The singular air,While..
© Sylvia Plath
Song For A Summer's Day
Through fen and farmland walkingWith my own country loveI saw slow flocked cows moveWhite hulks on their day's cruising;Sweet grass sprang for their..
© Sylvia Plath
Brasilia
Will they occur,These people with torso of steelWinged elbows and eyeholesAwaiting massesOf cloud to give them expression,These super-people! -And my..
© Sylvia Plath
Miss Drake Proceeds To Supper
No noviceIn those elaborate ritualsWhich allay the maliceOf knotted table and crooked chair,The new woman in the wardWears purple, steps..
© Sylvia Plath
Medallion
By the gate with star and moonWorked into the peeled orange woodThe bronze snake lay in the sunInert as a shoelace; deadBut pliable still, his..
© Sylvia Plath
Sonnet : To Eva
All right, let's say you could take a skull and break itThe way you'd crack a clock; you'd crush the boneBetween steel palms of inclination, take..
© Sylvia Plath
Pheasant
You said you would kill it this morning.Do not kill it. It startles me still,The jut of that odd, dark head, pacingThrough the uncut grass on the..
© Sylvia Plath
Notes To A Neophyte
Take the general mumble,blunt as the faceless gutof an anonymous clam,vernacular as the strutof a slug or a small preambleby snail under hump of..
© Sylvia Plath
Magnolia Shoals
Up here among the gull crieswe stroll through a maze of palered-mottled relics, shells, clawsas if it were summer still.That season has turned its..
© Sylvia Plath
Letter To A Purist
That grandiose colossus whoStood astrideThe envious assaults of sea(Essaying, wave by wave,Tide by tide,To undo him, perpetually),Has nothing on..
© Sylvia Plath
The Companionable Ills
The nose-end that twitches, the old imperfections—-Tolerable now as moles on the facePut up with until chagrin gives placeTo a wry complaisance—-Dug..
© Sylvia Plath
The Princess And The Goblins
From fabrication springs the spiral stairup which the wakeful princess climbs to findthe source of blanching light that conjured herto leave her bed..
© Sylvia Plath