I feel numb and dumb, and unable to lay hands on any words.
“
| — | Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals (via selbstvergessen) |
Sonnet: to Spring
you deceive us with the crinkled green
of juvenile stars, and you beguile us with
a bland vanilla moon of maple cream:
again you tame us with your april myth.
last year you tricked us by the childish jingle
of your tinsel rains: again you try,
and find us credulous once more. A single
diabolic shower, and we cry
to see the honey flavored morning tilt
clear light across the water gilded lawn.
although another of our tears is spilt
on avaricious earth, you lure us on:
Again we are deluded and infer
That somehow we are younger than we were.
“
| — |
Sylvia Plath 1951 from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000) |
I love him to hell and back and heaven and back, and have and do and will.
“
| — | The Journals of Sylvia Plath, Sylvia Plath (via sickboysgirl) |
Lady Lazurus
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.
HAPPY 53rd BIRTHDAY Frieda Hughes!!!
*******************************************************************************************
Full Moon and Little FriedaA cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider’s web, tense for the dew’s touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.
Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
‘Moon!’ you cry suddenly, ‘Moon! Moon!’
The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.—Ted Hughes, Wodwo, 1967
