Poemunity — your poem community

Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day, I sit in solitude and only hear Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay, The lost intensities of hope and fear; In those old marshes yet the rifles lie, On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags, The very books I read are there—and I Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags Its wounded length from those sad streets of war Into green places here, that were my own; But now what once was mine is mine no more, I seek such neighbours here and I find none. With such strong gentleness and tireless will Those ruined houses seared themselves in me, Passionate I look for their dumb story still, And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree. I rise up at the singing of a bird And scarcely knowing slink along the lane, I dare not give a soul a look or word For all have homes and none's at home in vain: Deep red the rose burned in the grim redoubt, The self-sown wheat around was like a flood, In the hot path the lizards lolled time out, The saints in broken shrines were bright as blood. Sweet Mary's shrine between the sycamores! There we would go, my friend of friends and I, And snatch long moments from the grudging wars; Whose dark made light intense to see them by ... Shrewd bit the morning fog, the whining shots Spun from the wrangling wire; then in warm swoon The sun hushed all but the cool orchard plots, We crept in the tall grass and slept till noon.

A sycamore on either side In whose lovely leafage cried Hushingly the little winds — Thus was Mary’s shrine descried. “Sixteen Hundred and Twenty-Four” Legended above the door, “Pray, sweet gracious Lady, pray For our souls,”—and nothing more. Builded of rude gray stones and these Scarred and marred from base to frieze With the shrapnel’s pounces—ah, Fair she braved War’s gaunt disease: Fair she pondered on the strange Embitterments of latter change, Looking fair towards Festubert, Cloven roof and tortured grange. Work of carving too there was, (Once had been her reredos), In this cool and peaceful cell That the hoarse guns blared across. Twisted oaken pillars graced With oaken amaranths interlaced In oaken garlandry, had borne Her holy niche—and now laid waste. Mary, pray for us? O pray! In thy dwelling by this way What poor folks have knelt to thee! We are no less poor than they.

I woke. You were lying beside me in the double bed, prone, your long dark hair fanned out over the downy pillow. I’d been dreaming we stood on a beach an ocean away watching the waves purl into their troughs and tumble over. Knit one, purl two, you said. Something in your voice made me think of women knitting by the guillotine. Your eyes met mine. The fetch of a wave is the distance it travels, you said, from where it is born at sea to where it founders to shore. I must go back to where it all began. You waded in thigh-deep, waist-deep, breast-deep, head-deep, until you disappeared. I lay there and thought how glad I was to find you again. You stirred in the bed and moaned something. I heard a footfall on the landing, the rasp of a man’s cough. He put his head around the door. He had my face. I woke. You were not there.

To-night again the moon’s white mat Stretches across the dormitory floor While outside, like an evil cat The pion prowls down the dark corridor, Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite For getting leave to sleep in town last night. But it was none of us who made that noise, Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies Out of the ivy—he will say it was us boys— Seigneur mon Dieu: the sacré soul of spies! He would like to catch each dream that lies Hidden behind our sleepy eyes: Their dream? But mine—it is the moon and the wood that sees; All my long life how I shall hate the trees! In the Place d’Armes the dusty planes, all Summer through, Dozed with the market women in the sun and scarcely stirred To see the quiet things that crossed the Square—, A tiny funeral, the flying shadow of a bird, The hump-backed barber Célestin Lemaire, Old Madame Michel in her three-wheeled chair, And filing past to Vespers, two and two, The demoiselles of the pensionnat Towed like a ship through the harbour bar, Safe into port, where le petit Jésus Perhaps makes nothing of the look they shot at you: Si, c ’ est défendu, mais que voulez-vous? It was the sun. The sunshine weaves A pattern on dull stones: the sunshine leaves The portraiture of dreams upon the eyes Before it dies: All Summer through The dust hung white upon the drowsy planes Till suddenly they woke with the Autumn rains. It is not only the little boys Who have hardly got away from toys, But I, who am seventeen next year, Some nights, in bed, have grown cold to hear That lonely passion of the rain Which makes you think of being dead, And of somewhere living to lay your head As if you were a child again, Crying for one thing, known and near Your empty heart, to still the hunger and the fear That pelts and beats with it against the pane. But I remember smiling too At all the sun’s soft tricks and those Autumn dreads In winter time, when the grey light broke slowly through The frosted window-lace to drag us shivering from our beds. And when at dusk the singing wind swung down Straight from the stars to the dark country roads Beyond the twinkling town, Striking the leafless poplar boughs as he went by, Like some poor, stray dog by the wayside lying dead, We left behind us the old world of dread, I and the wind as we strode whistling on under the Winter sky. And then in Spring for three days came the Fair Just as the planes were starting into bud Above the caravans: you saw the dancing bear Pass on his chain; and heard the jingle and the thud. Only four days ago They let you out of this dull show To slither down the montagne russe and chaff the man à la tête de veau Hit, slick, the bull's eye at the tir, Spin round and round till your head went queer On the porcs-roulants.Oh! là là! fête! Va pour du vin, et le tête-a-tête With the girl who sugars the gaufres! Pauvrette, How thin she was! but she smiled, you bet, As she took your tip—“One does not forget The good days, Monsieur”. Said with a grace, But sacrebleu: what a ghost of a face! And no fun too for the demoiselles Of the pensionnat, who were hurried past, With their “Oh, que c’est beau—Ah, qu’elle est belle!” A lap-dog’s life from first to last! ; The good nights are not made for sleep, nor the good days for dreaming in, And at the end in the big Circus tent we sat and shook and stewed like sin! Some children there had got—but where? Sent from the south, perhaps—a red bouquet Of roses, sweetening the fetid air With scent from gardens by some far away blue bay. They threw one at the dancing bear; The white clown caught it. From St. Rémy’s tower The deep, slow bell tolled out the hour; The black clown, with his dirty grin Lay, sprawling in the dust, as She rode in. She stood on a white horse—and suddenly you saw the bend Of a far-off road at dawn, with knights riding by, A field of spears—and then the gallant day Go out in storm, with ragged clouds low down, sullen and grey Against red heavens: wild and awful, such a sky As witnesses against you at the end Of a great battle; bugles blowing, blood and dust— The old Morte d’Arthur, fight you must—. It died in anger. But it was not death That had you by the throat, stopping your breath. She looked like Victory. She rode my way. She laughed at the black clown and then she flew A bird above us, on the wing Of her white arms; and you saw through A rent in the old tent, a patch of sky With one dim star. She flew, but not so high— And then she did not fly; She stood in the bright moonlight at the door Of a strange room, she threw her slippers on the floor— Again, again You heard the patter of the rain, The starving rain—it was this Thing, Summer was this, the gold mist in your eyes;— Oh God! it dies, But after death—, To-night the splendour and the sting Blows back and catches at your breath, The smell of beasts, the smell of dust, the scent of all the roses in the world, the sea, the Spring, The beat of drums, the pad of hoofs, music, the dream, the dream, the Enchanted Thing! At first you scarcely saw her face, You knew the maddening feet were there, What called was that half-hidden, white unrest To which now and then she pressed Her finger-tips; but as she slackened pace And turned and looked at you it grew quite bare: There was not anything you did not dare:— Like trumpeters the hours passed until the last day of the Fair. In the Place d’Armes all afternoon The building birds had sung “Soon, soon”, The shuttered streets slept sound that night, It was full moon: The path into the wood was almost white, The trees were very still and seemed to stare: Not far before your soul the Dream flits on, But when you touch it, it is gone And quite alone your soul stands there. Mother of Christ, no one has seen your eyes: how can men pray Even unto you? There were only wolves’ eyes in the wood— My Mother is a woman too: Nothing is true that is not good, With that quick smile of hers, I have heard her say;— I wish I had gone back home to-day; I should have watched the light that so gently dies From our high window, in the Paris skies, The long, straight chain Of lamps hung out along the Seine: I would have turned to her and let the rain Beat on her breast as it does against the pane;— Nothing will be the same again;— There is something strange in my little Mother’s eyes, There is something new in the old heavenly air of Spring— The smell of beasts, the smell of dust—The Enchanted Thing! All my life long I shall see moonlight on the fern And the black trunks of trees. Only the hair Of any woman can belong to God. The stalks are cruelly broken where we trod, There had been violets there, I shall not care As I used to do when I see the bracken burn.

I never knew the earth had so much gold— The fields run over with it, and this hill Hoary and old, Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill. Such golden fires, such yellow—lo, how good This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God! This fringe of wood, Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod. You too, beloved, are changed. Again I see Your face grow mystical, as on that night You turned to me, And all the trembling world—and you—were white. Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb; The fields absorb you, color you entire . . . And you become A goddess standing in a world of fire!

Four buskers almost balkanized, tonight, August 4th, the Place de la Contrescarpe. Every one of them in wind and limb complete, The accordionist all but a hunchback-- After the first melodious flourishes were done, The clarinet began to take his instrument apart, Blowing shorter tunes, to show the way it worked; But on a keyboard hanging from his neck The carpenter pianist banged out routine chords And the violin a beanpole man was fingering Sliced through the edges of catalpa leaves With long shrieks, rat trills, and all in fun. Cars now orbiting the quadrangle of trees Turned into tubes filled with human meat, Notes took the scent of carnage from their lager (Even so, the buzz of talk, no way to stop it) And cherry red the track suit of its rider, The sliced leaves, iron chains that link Old mooring posts around the beds of flowers. Fogged the eye with fright, and meaning trouble Identical white camper caravans Rolled into view, the one behind the other, For things to jump from, us to be flung into. Rohmahniyah! he shouts, shaking his money pot, The clarinettist,Ceausescu, fini! Whereupon, Classic features, stepping light and fresh From reeds that told secrets of a beauty parlour. A nice Missouri girl, in gree, with pearls To plug each earlobe, pushed her wicker chair aside; Showing a dainty midriff, on steady legs She strolled across the street, as if to depollute With every breath, every stride, the air Our music for a moment had iunhabited. Then the white, lost caravans came back again, Carnation milk inside, stringbags of potatoes, Family snug inside, in each a Belgian grandpa, Peering every which way, at the wheel.

The heat so peaked tonight the moon can’t cool a scum-mucked swimming pool, or breeze emerge to lift the frowsy ruff of owls too hot to hoot, (the mouse and brown barn rat astute enough to know to drop and dash) while on the bunched up, corkscrewed sheets of cots and slumped brass beds, the fitful twist and kink and plead to dream a dream of air as bitter cruel as winter gale that scrapes and blows and gusts the grate to luff the whitened ashes from the coal.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations Pure? What does it mean? The tongues of hell Are dull, dull as the triple Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus Cerberus a hound in Greek and Roman mythology that guards the gates of Hell (Hades), often represented with three heads Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable Of licking clean The aguey aguey characterized by an acute fever, accompanied by shivering or shaking tendon, the sin, the sin. aguey In Plath's recorded reading of this poem, she adds four lines after this one: "O auto-da-fe! the purple men, / Gold-crusted, thick with spleen, / Sit with their hooks and crooks / and stoke the light." These lines do not appear in the original publication version (Poetry, August 1963) nor in The Collected Poems of Sylvia Plath(1966), where this text is taken. The tinder cries. The indelible indelible permanent smell Of a snuffed candle! Love, love, the low smokes roll From me like Isadora’s scarves Isadora’s scarves American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) had a known longing for flowing scarves. She died in a freak car accident, most likely by strangulation, when her long scarf wrapped around her neck became caught in one of the wheel spokes of the traveling car. , I’m in a fright One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel, Such yellow sullen smokes Make their own element. They will not rise, But trundle trundle roll round the globe Choking the aged and the meek, The weak Hothouse Hothouse a heated greenhouse where plants are bred baby in its crib, The ghastly orchid Hanging its hanging garden in the air, Devilish leopard! Radiation turned it white And killed it in an hour. Greasing the bodies of adulterers Like Hiroshima Hiroshima Japanese industrial city which was the first of two cities hit with an atomic bomb by the U.S. in August 1945 to end World War II. Many survivors of the attack later died of radiation burns or sickness. ash and eating in. The sin. The sin. Darling, all night I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s lecher a person with strong sexual desires; lustful kiss. Three days. Three nights. Lemon water, chicken Water, water make me retch. I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern—— My head a moon Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. Does not my heat astound you! And my light! All by myself I am a huge camellia camellia a plant native to Asia, with large flowers typically red or pink in color Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush. I think I am going up, I think I may rise—— The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I Am a pure acetylene acetylene a colorless, flammable gas that produces a high heat under pressure, used for torch welding and the cutting or purifying of metals Virgin Attended by roses, By kisses, by cherubim cherubim plural of “cherub”; high-ranking angels mentioned in the Bible, often depicted in paintings as winged babies or toddlers. , By whatever these pink things mean! Not you, nor him Nor him, nor him (My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)—— To Paradise.

Too many are leaving usually they greet in sleep before dashing as in today with this gentleman (awkward not to type his name) when yesterday in the shower I remembered his face in Aardvark something about NWA but not about them just a played reference There were newspaper clips all police brutality, all framed with snow & I vaguely recalled something about Uma Thurman & the Menils when the guard ushered me out for touching the African sculptures I waited in the lobby for hours like this morning reading that he overdosed. It was a hotel & I didn’t even know him I don’t even know his work

Babies must not eat the coal And they must not make grimaces, Nor in party dresses roll And must never black their faces. They must learn that pointing’s rude, They must sit quite still at table, And must always eat the food Put before them—if they’re able. If they fall, they must not cry, Though it’s known how painful this is; No—there’s always Mother by Who will comfort them with kisses.