Sylvia Plath

Dragostea te-a-nceput, ca ora în ceasul de aur. Moașa ți-a dat cu palma peste tălpi și țipătul tău A răsunat peste stihii. Ne-am bucurat de tine

Stază în beznă. Apoi albastrul inefabil Care se revarsă de pe deal și din zare. Leoaica Domnului, Cum devenim o singură ființă, Puls de

Sunt de argint și exactă. Nu am prejudecăți. Orice văd înghit imediat Așa cum e, ne-ncețoșat de dragoste sau repulsie. Nu sunt crudă, ci doar

Vin ca animalele din hăul cosmic Al ilicelor, unde țepii nu seamănă deloc Cu gândurile pe care mă răsucesc ca un yogin. Verdeață sunt și-ntunecime

Lalele sunt din cale afară de vii și aici e iarnă. Totul e atât de alb, de tăcut, și-ngropat în zăpadă. Singură zăcând în tăcere mă deprind cu

am comis-o din nou la fiecare zece ani o scot la capăt ---- un soi de miracol ambulant, pielea mea strălucitoare precum un abajur

Aceasta este lumina minții, rece, și planetară. Copacii din minte sunt negri. Lumina e albastră. Ierburile își leapădă suferințele la picioarele

Maci micuți, voi, mici flăcări ale iadului, Chiar nu faceți nici un rău ? Pâlpâiți. Nu pot să vă ating. Îmi întind mâinile printre flăcări. Nu

Cuvântul unui melc în palma unei frunze? Nu-i de la mine. Nu. Să nu-l accepți. Acid acetic într-o cutiuță-nchisă? Să nu-l primești. Nu-i

Dar aș prefera orizontala. Eu nu sunt un arbore, cu rădăcinile adânc înfipte în pământ din care să sorb minerale și dragoste maternă, ca să pot

Cunosc străfundul, spune ea. L-am cunoscut cu brațul unei rădăcini. Þie de el ți-e teamă. Eu n-am nici o spaimă : am fost chiar acolo. Tu n-auzi

Nici norii însoriți ai acestei dimineți nu-și pot croi asemenea veșminte Nici femeia din ambulanță A cărei inimă roșie îi înflorește uimitor prin

Iubitule, lumea Se rotește deodată, își rotește culoarea, felinarul din stradă Își strecoară lumina prin cozile de șobolan Ale păstăilor laurului

Câmpurile pășesc îndepărtându-se întru alb, Făpturi sau stele Mă privesc triste, le dezamăgesc. Trenul lasă in urma lui o linie de suflare. O,

The night is only a sort of carbon paper, Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars Letting in the light, peephole after peephole --- A

Vara îmbătrânește; mamă cu sângele rece. Rare-s gâzele, firave. În aceste palustre sălașe, doar noi orăcăim și tânjim. Diminețile se risipesc

Solii Lumea unui melc pe tipsia unei frunze. Nu-mi aparține. Să nu o accepți. Acid acetic într-o butelie sigilată Nu-l accepta. Nu-i

Pură ? Ce vrea să însemne asta ? Limbile Gheenei Sunt plicticoase aidoma celor trei limbi Ale plicticosului, pântecosului Cerber Care șuieră-n

Nimeni pe cărare, și nimic, nimic decât mure, mure de o parte, de alta, deși mai mult către dreapta, o cărare de mure, coborând în ocoluri, și

Degetele negre ale chiparosului amenință: Nori reci trec pe deasupra. Tot astfel surdo-muții Fac semne orbilor,și rămân neștiuți. Mie îmi plac

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow, My tears like vinegar, Or the bitter blinking yellow Of an acetic star. Tonight the caustic wind, love,

Trec norii peste trupul tău, Sus, foarte sus și-nghețați, Puțin turtiți ca și când Ar pluti peste-un geam nevăzut, Altfel decât lebedele Fără

Roșul se-adună într-o singură pată. Restul trupului e spălăcit Ca o perlă. În căușul stâncii Hăuri de valuri sorbind întărâtate, O singură

Maci pirpirii, limbi subțiri ale iadului Nu vătămați pe nimeni? Voi biciuiți pe-ascuns. Nici nu pot să v-ating Îmi trec mâinile printre

Un surâs s-a prelins în iarbă. Irecuperabil ! Și dansurile tale nocturne Unde se vor pierde ? În matematici poate ? Aceste pure salturi și

Eu-s o șaradă în nouă silabe. Un elefant, o casă masivă, un pepene hoinărind pe doi cârcei de viță, o poamă roșie, de fildeș, frumoși

Orizonturile mă încercuiesc ca niște vreascuri, Înclinate, disparate, și mereu nestabile, Atinse cu un chibrit m-ar putea încălzi, Și liniile lor

Whiteness being what I remember About Sam: whiteness and the great run He gave me. I\'ve gone nowhere since but Going\'s been tame deviation.

The yew\'s black fingers wag: Cold clouds go over. So the deaf and dumb Signal the blind, and are ignored. I like black statements. The

The white light is artificial, and hygienic as heaven. The microbes cannot survive it. They are departing in their transparent garments, turned

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. What ever you see I swallow immediately Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not

When night comes black Such royal dreams beckon this man As lift him apart From his earth-wife\'s side To wing, sleep-feathered, The singular

Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God\'s lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees!--The

Touch it: it won\'t shrink like an eyeball, This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear. Here\'s yesterday, last year --- Palm-spear and lily

What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful? It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges? I am sure it is unique, I am sure it

Since Christmas they have lived with us, Guileless and clear, Oval soul-animals, Taking up half the space, Moving and rubbing on the

In the dour ages Of drafty cells and draftier castles, Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables, Saint and king unfisted obstruction\'s

In Alicante they bowl the barrels Bumblingly over the nubs of the cobbles Past the yellow-paella eateries, Below the ramshackle back-alley

Compelled by calamity\'s magnet They loiter and stare as if the house Burnt-out were theirs, or as if they thought Some scandal might any minute

At this wharf there are no grand landings to speak of. Red and orange barges list and blister Shackled to the dock, outmoded, gaudy, And

1 They\'re out of the dark\'s ragbag, these two Moles dead in the pebbled rut, Shapeless as flung gloves, a few feet apart --- Blue suede a dog

the slime of all my yesterdays rots in the hollow of my skull and if my stomach would contract because of some explicable phenomenon such as

I\'m through with this grand looking-glass hotel where adjectives play croquet with flamingo nouns; methinks I shall absent me for a while from

If you dissect a bird To diagram the tongue You\'ll cut the chord Articulating song. If you flay a beast To marvel at the mane You\'ll wreck

Worship this world of watercolor mood in glass pagodas hung with veils of green where diamonds jangle hymns within the blood and sap ascends the

(I) This is the sea, then, this great abeyance. How the sun\'s poultice draws on my inflammation. Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped

In the Archæological Museum in Cambridge is a stone coffin of the fourth century A.D. containing the skeletons of a woman, a mouse and a

The smile of iceboxes annihilates me. Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one! I hear her great heart purr. From her lips ampersands

Will they occur, These people with torso of steel Winged elbows and eyeholes Awaiting masses Of cloud to give them expression, These

I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard\'s study; because he would make love to me I am sending back the key; in his eye\'s darkroom

There is this white wall, above which the sky creates itself--- Infinite, green, utterly untouchable. Angels swim in it, and the stars, in

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries, Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly, A blackberry alley, going down

Empty, I echo to the least footfall, Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas. In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks

Here in this valley of discrete academies We have not mountains, but mounts, truncated hillocks To the Adirondacks, to northern

deep in liquid turquoise slivers of dilute light quiver in thin streaks of bright tinfoil on mobile jet: pale flounder waver by tilting

Spry, wry, and gray as these March sticks, Percy bows, in his blue peajacket, among the narcissi. He is recuperating from something on the

Off that landspit of stony mouth-plugs, Eyes rolled by white sticks, Ears cupping the sea\'s incoherences, You house your unnerving

I can stay awake all night, if need be -- Cold as an eel, without eyelids. Like a dead lake the dark envelops me, Blueblack, a spectacular plum

This is a dark house, very big. I made it myself, Cell by cell from a quiet corner, Chewing at the grey paper, Oozing the glue drops, Whistling,

Grub-white mulberries redden among leaves. I\'ll go out and sit in white like they do, Doing nothing. July\'s juice rounds their nubs. This park

Tell me what you see in it : The pine tree like a Rorschach-blot black against the orange light : Plant an orange pumpkin patch which at

All morning in the strawberry field They talked about the Russians. Squatted down between the rows We listened. We heard the head woman

On the stiff twig up there Hunches a wet black rook Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain. I do not expect a miracle Or an

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

Outlandish as a circus, the ravaged face Parades the marketplace, lurid and stricken By some unutterable chagrin, Maudlin from leaky eye to

Clocks cry: stillness is a lie, my dear; The wheels revolve, the universe keeps running. (Proud you halt upon the spiral stair.) The asteroids

Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm? You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns. And

This man makes a pseudonym And crawls behind it like a worm. This woman on the telephone Says she is a man, not a woman. The mask increases,

An old beast ended in this place: A monster of wood and rusty teeth. Fire smelted his eyes to lumps Of pale blue vitreous stuff, opaque As

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill it with color and ducks, The zoo of the new Whose names you meditate

It is a chilly god, a god of shades, Rises to the glass from his black fathoms. At the window, those unborn, those undone Assemble with the frail

The Triumph of Wit Over Suffering Head alone shows you in the prodigious act Of digesting what centuries alone digest: The mammoth, lumbering

Non servi, non servi Non più, nera scarpa, come un piede vi ho vissuto Per trent\'anni, gramo e bianco, Trattenendo fiato e starnuto.

The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels, Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels Begin on tilted

The day you died I went into the dirt, Into the lightless hibernaculum Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard Like hieratic

The woman is perfected. Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment, The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga, Her

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

I came before the water --- Colorists came to get the Good of the Cape light that scours Sand grit to sided crystal And buffs and sleeks the

For Susan O\'Neill Roe What a thrill --- My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone Except for a sort of a hinge Of skin, A flap like

Kindness glides about my house. Dame Kindness, she is so nice! The blue and red jewels of her rings smoke In the windows, the mirrors Are filling

Sky and sea, horizon-hinged Tablets of blank blue, couldn\'t, Clapped shut, flatten this man out. The great gods, Stone-Head, Claw-Foot Winded

I made a fire; being tired Of the white fists of old Letters and their death rattle When I came too close to the wastebasket What did they know

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,

\"Overnight, very Whitely, discreetly, Very quietly Our toes, our noses Take hold on the loam, Acquire the air. Nobody sees us,

\"I shall never get you put together entirely, Pieced, glued, and properly jointed. Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles Proceed from your

This is not what I meant: Stucco arches, the banked rocks sunning in rows, Bald eyes or petrified eggs, Grownups coffined in stockings and

From under the crunch of my man\'s boot green oat-sprouts jut; he names a lapwing, starts rabbits in a rout legging it most nimble to sprigged

For Ruth Fainlight I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people. Where do the black trees go that drink here? Their shadows must cover Canada. A little

He, hunger-strung, hard to slake, So fitted is for my black luck (With heat such as no man could have And yet keep kind) That all merit\'s in

The engine is killing the track, the track is silver, It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless. Its running is useless. At

Bare-handed, I hand the combs. The man in white smiles, bare-handed, Our cheesecloth gauntlets neat and sweet, The throats of our wrists brave

From Water-Tower Hill to the brick prison The shingle booms, bickering under The sea\'s collapse. Snowcakes break and welter. This year The

These poems do not live: it\'s a sad diagnosis. They grew their toes and fingers well enough, Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.

Widow. The word consumes itself --- Body, a sheet of newsprint on the fire Levitating a numb minute in the updraft Over the scalding, red

The word of a snail on the plate of a leaf? It is not mine. Do not accept it. Acetic acid in a sealed tin? Do not accept it. It is not

He was the bullman earlierm King of the dish, my lucky animal. Breathing was easy in his airy holding. The sun sat in his armpit. Nothing went

Axes After whose stroke the wood rings, And the echoes! Echoes traveling Off from the center like horses. The sap Wells like tears,

Color floods to the spot, dull purple. The rest of the body is all washed out, The color of pearl. In a pit of rock The sea sucks

The month of flowering\'s finished. The fruit\'s in, Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth. October\'s the month for storage. Thie shed\'s fusty as a

It happens. Will it go on?--- My mind a rock, No fingers to grip, no tongue, My god the iron lung That loves me, pumps My two Dust bags

Jade--- Stone of the side, The antagonized Side of green Adam, I Smile, cross-legged, Enigmatical, Shifting my clarities. So valuable!

The hills step off into whiteness. People or stars Regard me sadly, I disappoint them. The train leaves a line of breath. O slow Horse

Thou shalt have an everlasting Monday and stand in the moon. The moon\'s man stands in his shell, Bent under a bundle Of sticks. The light

Clocks belled twelve. Main street showed otherwise Than its suburb of woods : nimbus--- Lit, but unpeopled, held its windows Of wedding

But I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam

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

I\'m a riddle in nine syllables. An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers! This

Riding home from credulous blue domes, the dreamer reins his waking appetite in panic at the crop of catacombs sprung up like plague of

Over your body the clouds go High, high and icily And a little flat, as if they Unlike swans, Having no reflections; Unlike you, With no

They enter as animals from the outer Space of holly where spikes Are not thoughts I turn on, like a Yogi, But greenness, darkness so pure They

The womb Rattles its pod, the moon Discharges itself from the tree with nowhere to go. My landscape is a hand with no lines, The roads bunched

O mud, mud, how fluid! --- Thick as foreign coffee, and with a sluggy pulse. Speak, speak! Who is it? It is the bowel-pulse, lover of

First, are you our sort of a person? Do you wear A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch, A brace or a hook, Rubber breasts or a rubber

By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me. I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet. The nights snapped out of sight like a

It is no night to drown in: A full moon, river lapsing Black beneath bland mirror-sheen, The blue water-mists dropping Scrim after scrim

That grandiose colossus who Stood astride The envious assaults of sea (Essaying, wave by wave, Tide by tide, To undo him, perpetually), Has

Voici parfaite la femme. Mort, Son corps arbore le sourire de l’accomplissement; L’illusion d’une nécessité grecque Flotte parmi les

Midnight in the mid-Atlantic. On deck. Wrapped up in themselves as in thick veiling And mute as mannequins in a dress shop, Some few passangers

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts. Nor the woman in the ambulance Whose red heart blooms through her coat so

They are the last romantics, these candles: Upside-down hearts of light tipping wax fingers, And the fingers, taken in by their own haloes, Grown

This is winter, this is night, small love --- A sort of black horsehair, A rough, dumb country stuff Steeled with the sheen Of what green stars

The figs on the fig tree in the yard are green; Green, also, the grapes on the green vine Shading the brickred porch tiles. The money\'s run

O half moon--- Half-brain, luminosity--- Negro, masked like a white, Your dark Amputations crawl and appall--- Spidery, unsafe. What

The telegram says you have gone away And left our bankrupt circus on its town; There is nothing more for me to say. The maestro gives the

The idiot bird leaps out and drunken leans Atop the broken universal clock: The hour is crowed in lunatic thirteens. Out painted stages fall apart

By the gate with star and moon Worked into the peeled orange wood The bronze snake lay in the sun Inert as a shoelace; dead But pliable still,

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

I ordered this, clean wood box Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift. I would say it was the coffin of a midget Or a square baby Were

The photographic chamber of the eye records bare painted walls, while an electric light lays the chromium nerves of plumbing raw; such poverty

A Sestina for the Dounier Yadwigha, the literalists once wondered how you Came to be lying on this baroque couch Upholstered in red velvet,

\"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go

A smile fell in the grass. Irretrievable! And how will your night dances Lose themselves. In mathematics? Such pure leaps and spirals -

For Leonard Baskin To his house the bodiless Come to barter endlessly Vision, wisdom, for bodies Palpable as his, and weighty. Hands

This is newness : every little tawdry Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar, Glinting and clinking in a saint\'s falsetto. Only you Don\'t know what

How the elements solidify! --- The moonlight, that chalk cliff In whose rift we lie Back to back. I here an owl cry From its cold

How this tart fable instructs And mocks! Here\'s the parody of that moral mousetrap Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers Approving chased

Blameless as daylight I stood looking At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown, Tails streaming against the green Backdrop of sycamores. Sun

No use whistling for Lyonnesse ! Sea-cold, sea-cold it certainly is. Take a look at the white, high berg on his forehead- There\'s where it

The nose-end that twitches, the old imperfections--- Tolerable now as moles on the face Put up with until chagrin gives place To a wry

Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children. Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb Where the yew trees blow like hydras, The tree of life

Pour Helder et Suzette Macedo Même les nuages au soleil de ce matin ne savent inventer de telles jupes Ni la femme dans l’ambulance Dont le

Pure? What does it mean? The tongues of hell Are dull, dull as the triple Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable Of

Up here among the gull cries we stroll through a maze of pale red-mottled relics, shells, claws as if it were summer still. That season has

The abstracts hover like dull angels: Nothing so vulgar as a nose or an eye Bossing the ethereal blanks of their face-ovals. Their whiteness

Behind him the hotdogs split and drizzled On the public grills, and the ochreous salt flats, Gas tanks, factory stacks- that landscape Of

I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now: This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one, And the white person is

Petits coquelicots, petites flammes d’enfer, Vous ne faites pas mal ? Vous tremblez. Je ne sais pas vous toucher. Je mets les mains dans les

This is the easy time, there is nothing doing. I have whirled the midwife\'s extractor, I have my honey, Six jars of it, Six cat\'s eyes in

Who are these people at the bridge to meet me? They are the villagers --- The rector, the midwife, the sexton, the agent for bees. In my

Pure? What does it mean? The tongues of hell Are dull, dull as the triple Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable of

\'Tea leaves I\'ve given up, And that crooked line On the queen\'s palm Is no more my concern. On my black pilgrimage This moon-pocked crystal

Mud-mattressed under the sign of the hag In a clench of blood, the sleep-talking virgin Gibbets with her curse the moon\'s man, Faggot-bearing

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

This was the land\'s end: the last fingers, knuckled and rheumatic, Cramped on nothing. Black Admonitory cliffs, and the sea exploding With no

In sunless air, under pines Green to the point of blackness, some Founding father set these lobed, warped stones To loom in the leaf-filtered

On this bald hill the new year hones its edge. Faceless and pale as china The round sky goes on minding its business. Your absence is

You come in late, wiping your lips. What did I leave untouched on the doorstep--- White Nike, Streaming between my walls? Smilingly, blue

Sharded in black, like beetles, Frail as antique earthenwear One breath might shiver to bits, The old women creep out here To sun on the rocks or

Sing praise for statuary: For those anchored attitudes And staunch stone eyes that stare Through lichen-lid and passing bird-foot At some

Mother, mother, what illbred aunt Or what disfigured and unsightly Cousin did you so unwisely keep Unasked to my christening, that she Sent

There is a panther stalks me down: One day I\'ll have my death of him; His greed has set the woods aflame, He prowls more lordly than the sun.

I can taste the tin of the sky --- the real tin thing. Winter dawn is the color of metal, The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves. All

The Sunday lamb cracks in its fat. The fat Sacrifices its opacity.... A window, holy gold. The fire makes it precious, The same

Not easy to state the change you made. If I\'m alive now, then I was dead, Though, like a stone, unbothered by it, Staying put according to

The horizons ring me like faggots, Tilted and disparate, and always unstable. Touched by a match, they might warm me, And their fine lines

Two, of course there are two. It seems perfectly natural now --- The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded And balled¸ like Blake\'s. Who

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

Mayday : two came to field in such wise : `A daisied mead\', each said to each, So were they one; so sought they couch, Across barbed stile,

Cold and final, the imagination Shuts down its fabled summer house; Blue views are boarded up; our sweet vacation Dwindles in the

I am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactites Drip and thicken, tears The earthen womb Exudes from its dead boredom. Black bat

Haunched like a faun, he hooed From grove of moon-glint and fen-frost Until all owls in the twigged forest Flapped black to look and brood On the

Old goatherds swear how all night long they hear The warning whirr and burring of the bird Who wakes with darkness and till dawn works

The Rival If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating. Both of you are

Always in the middle of a kiss Came the profane stimulus to cough; Always from teh pulpit during service Leaned the devil prompting you to

In the marketplace they are piling the dry sticks. A thicket of shadows is a poor coat. I inhabit The wax image of myself, a doll\'s

The air is a mill of hooks - Questions without answer, Glittering and drunk as flies Whose kiss stings unbearably In the fetid wombs of black air

Once I was ordinary: Sat by my father\'s bean tree Eating the fingers of wisdom. The birds made milk. When it thundered I hid under a flat

That lofty monarch, Monarch Mind, Blue-blooded in coarse contry reigned; Though he bedded in ermine, gorged on roast, Pure Philosophy his love

You said you would kill it this morning. Do not kill it. It startles me still, The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing Through the uncut grass on

Through frost-thick weather This witch sidles, fingers crooked, as if Caught in a hazardous medium that might Merely by its continuing Attach

Where the three magenta Breakwaters take the shove And suck of the grey sea To the left, and the wave Unfists against the dun Barb-wired

Somebody is shooting at something in our town A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street. Jealousy can open the blood, It can make black roses. Who

Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled, Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo\'s

It was not a heart, beating. That muted boom, that clangor Far off, not blood in the ears Drumming up and fever To impose on the evening.

The groundhog on the mountain did not run But fatly scuttled into the splayed fern And faced me, back to a ledge of dirt, to rattle Her sallow

Revolving in oval loops of solar speed, Couched in cauls of clay as in holy robes, Dead men render love and war no heed, Lulled in the ample womb

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet

You bring me good news from the clinic, Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white Mummy-cloths, smiling: I\'m all right. When I was

Among orange-tile rooftops and chimney pots the fen fog slips, gray as rats, while on spotted branch of the sycamore two black rooks

Irrefutable, beautifully smug As Venus, pedestalled on a half-shell Shawled in blond hair and the salt Scrim of a sea breeze, the women Settle in

Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone, plunges headlong into that black pond where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan floats

Enter the chilly no-man\'s land of about Five o\'clock in the morning, the no-color void Where the waking head rubbishes out the draggled lot

Gold mouths cry with the green young certainty of the bronze boy remembering a thousand autumns and how a hundred thousand leaves came sliding

This wood burns a dark Incense. Pale moss drips In elbow-scarves, beards From the archaic Bones of the great trees. Blue mists move over A

Love, the world Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight Splits through the rat\'s tail Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning. It is

Flintlike, her feet struck Such a racket of echoes from the steely street, Tacking in moon-blued crooks from the black Stone-built town, that she

The word, defining, muzzles; the drawn line Ousts mistier peers and thrives, murderous, In establishments which imagined lines Can only

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus With tigery stripes, and a face on it Round as the moon, to stare up. I want to be looking at them

Lady, your room is lousy with flowers. When you kick me out, that\'s what I\'ll remember, Me, sitting here bored as a loepard In your jungle of

Take the general mumble, blunt as the faceless gut of an anonymous clam, vernacular as the strut of a slug or a small preamble by snail under

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in I am learning peacefulness, lying by

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

From my rented attic with no earth To call my own except the air-motes, I malign the leaden perspective Of identical gray brick houses, Orange

Viciousness in the kitchen! The potatoes hiss. It is all Hollywood, windowless, The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible

I\'ve got a stubborn goose whose gut\'s Honeycombed with golden eggs, Yet won\'t lay one. She, addled in her goose-wit, struts The barnyard like

All right, let\'s say you could take a skull and break it The way you\'d crack a clock; you\'d crush the bone Between steel palms of inclination,

Now we, returning from the vaulted domes Of our colossal sleep, come home to find A tall metropolis of catacombs Erected down the gangways of our

No map traces the street Where those two sleepers are. We have lost track of it. They lie as if under water In a blue, unchanging light,

Day of mist: day of tarnish with hands unserviceable, I wait for the milk van the one-eared cat laps its gray paw and the coal fire

A dream tree, Polly\'s tree : a thicket of sticks, each speckled twig ending in a thin-paned leaf unlike any other on it or in a ghost

Gerd sits spindle-shaped in her dark tent, Lean face gone tawn with seasons , Skin worn down to the knucklebones At her tough trade; without

With white frost gone And all green dreams not worth much, After a lean day\'s work Time comes round for that foul slut: Mere bruit of her takes

There, spring lambs jam the sheepfold. In air Stilled, silvered as water in a glass Nothing is big or far. The small shrew chitters from its

Par la racine de mes cheveux un dieu s’est emparé de moi. J’ai grésillé dans ses volts bleus comme un prophète du désert. Comme une paupière de

We came over the moor-top Through air streaming and green-lit, Stone farms foundering in it, Valleys of grass altering In a light neither

Through portico of my elegant house you stalk With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the

The winter landscape hangs in balance now, Transfixed by glare of blue from gorgon\'s eye; The skaters freese within a stone tableau. Air alters

You will be aware of an absence, presently, Growing beside you, like a tree, A death tree, color gone, an Australian gum tree --- Balding, gelded

Summer grows old, cold-blooded mother. The insects are scant, skinny. In these palustral homes we only Croak and wither. Mornings

Woodsmoke and a distant loudspeaker Filter into this clear Air, and blur. The red tomato\'s in, the green bean; The cook lugs a pumpkin From

All day she plays at chess with the bones of the world: Favored (while suddenly the rains begin Beyond the window) she lies on cushions curled And

Outside in the street I hear A car door slam; voices coming near; Incoherent scraps of talk And high heels clicking up the walk; The doorbell

A Villanelle The sting of bees took away my father who walked in a swarming shroud of wings and scorned the tick of the falling

On storm-struck deck, wind sirens caterwaul; With each tilt, shock and shudder, our blunt ship Cleaves forward into fury; dark as anger, Waves

All summer we moved in a villa brimful of echos, Cool as the pearled interior of a conch. Bells, hooves, of the high-stipping black goats woke

Out here there are no hearthstones, Hot grains, simply. It is dry, dry. And the air dangerous. Noonday acts queerly On the mind\'s eye erecting

Never try to trick me with a kiss Pretending that the birds are here to stay; The dying man will scoff and scorn at this. A stone can masquerade

A Poem for Three Voices Setting: A Maternity Ward and round about FIRST VOICE: I am slow as the world. I am very patient, Turning through my

They are always with us, the thin people Meager of dimension as the gray people On a movie-screen. They Are unreal, we say: It was only

Two girls there are : within the house One sits; the other, without. Daylong a duet of shade and light Plays between these. In her dark

The ordinary milkman brought that dawn Of destiny, delivered to the door In square hermetic bottles, while the sun Ruled decree of doomsday on the

The black bull bellowed before the sea. The sea, till that day orderly, Hove up against Bendylaw. The queen in the mulberry arbor stared Stiff

(Rock Lake, Canada) In this country there is neither measure nor balance To redress the dominance of rocks and woods, The passage, say, of these

Open-mouthed, the baby god Immense, bald, though baby-headed, Cried out for the mother\'s dug. The dry volcanoes cracked and split, Sand

In ruck and quibble of courtfolk This giant hulked, I tell you, on her scene With hands like derricks, Looks fierce and black as rooks; Why,

Here are two pupils whose moons of black transform to cripples all who look: each lovely lady who peers inside take on the body of a

First frost, and I walk among the rose-fruit, the marble toes Of the Greek beauties you brought Off Europe\'s relic heap To sweeten your neck of

Pocket watch, I tick well. The streets are lizardy crevices Sheer-sided, with holes where to hide. It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac, A

In the rectory garden on his evening walk Paced brisk Father Shawn. A cold day, a sodden one it was In black Novemeber. After a sliding rain Dew

Two virtues ride, by stallion, by nag, To grind our knives and scissors: Lantern-jawed Reason, squat Common Sense, One courting doctors of all

No novice In those elaborate rituals Which allay the malice Of knotted table and crooked chair, The new woman in the ward Wears purple, steps

Unlucky the hero born In this province of the stuck record Where the most watchful cooks go jobless And the mayor\'s rotisserie turns Round of

1 The day she visited the dissecting room They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey, Already half unstrung. A vinegary fume Of the death

In darkroom of your eye the moonly mind someraults to couterfeit eclipse; bright angels black out over logic\'s land under shutter of their

God knows how our neighbor managed to breed His great sow: Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid In the same way He kept the

Now this particular girl During a ceremonious April walk With her latest suitor Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck By the birds\'

Cold on my narrow cot I lie and in sorrow look through my window-square of black: figured in the midnight sky, a mosaic of stars diagrams the

How far is it? How far is it now? The gigantic gorilla interior Of the wheels move, they appall me --- The terrible brains Of Krupp, black

As the gods began one world, and man another, So the snakecharmer begins a snaky sphere With moon-eye, mouth-pipe. He pipes. Pipes green. Pipes

Bouche ouverte, le dieu en herbe Immense, chauve, à tête de bébé Réclama le sein de sa mère. Les volcans taris crachèrent en crépitant. Le

Haches Qui cognent et font sonner le bois, Retentir les échos ! Échos partis Gagner les lointains comme des chevaux. La sève Comme des

Old man, you surface seldom. Then you come in with the tide\'s coming When seas wash cold, foam- Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,

I I walk alone; The midnight street Spins itself from under my feet; When my eyes shut These dreaming houses all snuff out; Through a whim

Through fen and farmland walking With my own country love I saw slow flocked cows move White hulks on their day\'s cruising; Sweet grass sprang

In Benidorm there are melons, Whole donkey-carts full Of innumerable melons, Ovals and balls, Bright green and thumpable Laced over with

La gelée blanche envolée Et tous les rêves verts de quatre sous, Après un maigre jour de boulot Vient l’heure de cette infecte pute Dont

Now coldness comes sifting down, layer after layer, To our bower at the lily root. Overhead the old umbrellas of summer Wither like pithless

Born green we were to this flawed garden, but in speckled thickets, warted as a toad, spitefully skulks our warden, fixing his snare which

Color of lemon, mango, peach, These storybook villas Still dream behind Shutters, thier balconies Fine as hand- Made lace, or a leaf-and-flower

Better that every fiber crack and fury make head, blood drenching vivid couch, carpet, floor and the snake-figured almanac vouching you are

Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Pour of tor and distances. God\'s lioness, How one we grow, Pivot of heels and knees!--The

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

If you dissect a bird To diagram the tongue You\'ll cut the chord Articulating song. If you flay a beast To marvel at the mane You\'ll wreck

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

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

The abstracts hover like dull angels: Nothing so vulgar as a nose or an eye Bossing the ethereal blanks of their face-ovals. Their whiteness

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

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

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in I am learning peacefulness, lying by

Viciousness in the kitchen! The potatoes hiss. It is all Hollywood, windowless, The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible

First, are you our sort of a person? Do you wear A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch, A brace or a hook, Rubber breasts or a rubber

Will they occur, These people with torso of steel Winged elbows and eyeholes Awaiting masses Of cloud to give them expression, These

The air is a mill of hooks---- Questions without answer, Glittering and drunk as flies Whose kiss stings unbearably In the fetid wombs of black

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating. Both of you are great light

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

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

I can stay awake all night, if need be --- Cold as an eel, without eyelids. Like a dead lake the dark envelops me, Blueblack, a spectacular plum

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go