160 Illness poems

Thank Heaven! the crisis, The danger, is past, And the lingering illness Is over at last— And the fever called "Living" Is conquered at last. Sadly, I know I am shorn of my strength, And no muscle I move As I lie at full length— But no matter!—I feel I am better at length. And I rest so composedly, Now, in my bed, That any beholder Might fancy me dead— Might start at beholding me, Thinking me dead. The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:—ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing! The sickness—the nausea— The pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called "Living" That burned in my brain. And oh! of all tortures That torture the worst Has abated—the terrible Torture of thirst For the naphthaline river Of Passion accurst:— I have drank of a water That quenches all thirst:— Of a water that flows, With a lullaby sound, From a spring but a very few Feet under ground— From a cavern not very far Down under ground. And ah! let it never Be foolishly said That my room it is gloomy And narrow my bed; For man never slept In a different bed— And, to sleep , you must slumber In just such a bed. My tantalized spirit Here blandly reposes, Forgetting, or never Regretting, its roses— Its old agitations Of myrtles and roses: For now, while so quietly Lying, it fancies A holier odor About it, of pansies— A rosemary odor, Commingled with pansies— With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies. And so it lies happily, Bathing in many A dream of the truth And the beauty of Annie— Drowned in a bath Of the tresses of Annie. She tenderly kissed me, She fondly caressed, And then I fell gently To sleep on her breast— Deeply to sleep From the heaven of her breast. When the light was extinguished, She covered me warm, And she prayed to the angels To keep me from harm— To the queen of the angels To shield me from harm. And I lie so composedly, Now, in my bed, (Knowing her love) That you fancy me dead— And I rest so contentedly, Now in my bed (With her love at my breast). That you fancy me dead— That you shudder to look at me, Thinking me dead:— But my heart it is brighter Than all of the many Stars in the sky, For it sparkles with Annie— It glows with the light Of the love of my Annie— With the thought of the light Of the eyes of my Annie.

II.   Dalldorf Asylum: House 4, Ward B The white coats still come.Fraulein Unbekaant, they call me. Miss Unknown. One asks, Do I hear         voices       Do I          see things. The doctors here are not very well informed. When they appear at the foot of my bed, alabaster and looming        I hide my face in the sheets coarsened and brailled as if boiled in the well of a thousand drowned birds. So much worse is this quiet than the river’s drift and silt. Here I have only the rasp and cough of the woman bunked nearest me drooled to choking. On the floor, a puddle of saliva thickens.

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.

Matilde, years or days sleeping, feverish, here or there, gazing off, twisting my spine, bleeding true blood, perhaps I awaken or am lost, sleeping: hospital beds, foreign windows, white uniforms of the silent walkers, the clumsiness of feet. And then, these journeys and my sea of renewal: your head on the pillow, your hands floating in the light, in my light, over my earth. It was beautiful to live when you lived! The world is bluer and of the earth at night, when I sleep enormous, within your small hands.

In the early stages of epilepsy there occurs a characteristic dream .... One is somehow lifted free of one’s own body; looking back one sees oneself and feels a sudden, maddening fear; another presence is entering one’s own person, and there is no avenue of return. —George Steiner Outside my window the wasps are making their slow circle, dizzy flights of forage and return, hovering among azaleas that bob in a sluggish breeze this humid, sun-torn morning. Yesterday my wife held me here as I thrashed and moaned, her hand in my foaming mouth, and my son saw what he was warned he might. Last night dreams stormed my brain in thick swirls of shame and fear. Behind a white garage a locked shed full of wide-eyed dolls burned, yellow smoke boiling up in huge clumps as I watched, feet nailed to the ground. In dining cars white table cloths unfolded wings and flew like gulls. An old German in a green Homburg sang lieder,Mein Herz ist müde. In a garden in Pasadena my father posed in Navy whites while overhead silver dirigibles moved like great whales. And in the narrowing tunnel of the dream’s end I flew down onto the iron red road of my grandfather’s farm. There was a white rail fence. In the green meadow beyond, a small boy walked toward me. His smile was the moon’s rim. Across his egg-shell eyes ran scenes from my future life, and he embraced me like a son or father or my lost brother.

Shadows lengthened while we sat stuck in traffic just beyond San Rafael. Headlights had begun to flare in the cool dusk. The hum of the car's engine lulled me, and I put my forehead against the glass, looking out over a darkening landscape. We were headed to the Bishop's Ranch, a weekend retreat for Episcopal Young Churchmen in hilly country that would someday produce superlative wines with garnet hues that stain the inside of a glass. I was queasy from the lurching of the car, the stops and starts, the smell of exhaust. Though trembling with cold, I was too shy to ask the lady, the mother of one of the other girls, to turn on the heater. I imagined pale pink blossoms on the Japanese plum, apple trees laden with white flowers, and north of Sebastapol the vibrant yellow of daffodils on slender, pleated stems. That night I slept in a single bunk made up with thin sheets and blankets. A warm sun the next day restored me, but in the evening, seated by the fire that crackled in the fireplace of the big lodge, I felt flushed. Our recently ordained curate (we were not to know he was gay till some years later) had asked me to bring my guitar, and now he wanted me to sing about the girl who decides to sleep next to her mother her whole life long instead of falling for an unfaithful suitor. I sang; we all sang together. Young Father W. had a wonderful tenor voice. His smile reassured me, but now I was tired and, earlier than the others, I decided to return to the dorm. In that clear March night, the sky gleamed like black ink and stars blazed, bright and alive. Walking downhill, guitar in hand, I suddenly stumbled with dizziness, and the slope swam before me. “Hold on, hold on,” I told myself as I nearly fell onto the dew-slick lawn. For a moment I could sense myself floating away from my body. Back in the dorm, I crawled into bed and lay shuddering with cold, bones aching. The room seemed to spin. I wanted to be home, but the thought of facing my mother filled me with terrible dismay. I knew the blue failure notice mailed by the school would have arrived. Sure enough, it lay open on the dining table when I got home the following afternoon. A Sunday fog, hardly a mist, had blown in from the bay and was gathering in the eucalyptus across the ravine. The house was steamy. A basket of clean laundry occupied a chair atop a stack of San Francisco Chronicles. Mom sat at the table sewing, but I knew she was scowling. I thought it wise to look industrious, so I began to fold towels and pillowcases. “What I want to know,” began my mother, “is whether you have any ambition? Obviously, you will never get to college. What do you expect to do with your life?” She paused, and I shrugged. “Go ahead and shrug. Do you think your girlfriend is going to take care of you? That won’t last long. And why is it you only fall in love with girls? Well, I suppose you want to be a boy.” What an unutterable failure I am. I retreated, burned by her ferocious, upright anger. “Oh, yes, I’m sure you’re sick! But you will go to school tomorrow!” That night, wracked again with cold, unable to stop my trembling, I sought my parents’ bed, stood moaning till Mom woke and let me under the covers, where she tried to warm me with her body. Weeks later we learned that one of my classmates, a robust girl who shot baskets as well as any boy, had succumbed to the illness and died. That night, my mother placed her hand on my forehead–her smooth palm, her touch, gentle–and said to my barely awake dad, “Our daughter has a raging fever.” Like a miracle, I was still her child. Comforted, I slept.

You shouldn’t have a heart attack in your 20s. 47 is the perfect time for a heart attack. Feeding stray shadows only attracts more shadows. Starve a fever, shatter a glass house. People often mistake thirst for hunger so first take a big slurp. A motorboat is wasted on me even though all summer the pool was, I didn’t get in it once. Not in it, not in it twice. A dollhouse certainly isn’t wasted on a mouse both in terms of habitation and rhyme. Always leave yourself time to get lost. 50 cattle are enough for a decent dowry but sometimes a larger gesture is called for like shouting across the Grand Canyon. Get used to nothing answering back. Always remember the great effects of the Tang poets, the meagerness of their wine, meagerness of writing supplies. Go ahead, drown in the moon’s puddle. Contusions are to be expected and a long wait in ICU under the muted TVs advertising miracle knives and spot removers. How wonderful to be made entirely of hammered steel! No one knows why Lee chose to divert his troops to Gettysburg but all agree it was the turning point of the Civil War. Your turining point may be lying crying on the floor. Get up! The perfect age for being buried alive in sand is 8 but jumping up 33, alluding to the resurrection, a powerful motif in Western art but then go look at the soup cans and crumpled fenders in the modern wing: what a relief. Nearly 80% of the denizens of the deep can produce their own light but up here, we make our own darkness.

It's called a port, a harbor, haven, home, a city on the coast of my chest opened for a passage into my heart—which we say is where emotions live—and it's embedded, slipped into a shallow nest of flesh, a bump, a lump under the skin on the right so the narrow street can reach the marketplace of the aorta, receptive to any incoming ship, needle, boat, barge, unloading its spices, crates of dates, barrels of poisons, Etoposide phosphate, amethyst, amaranth, Cisplatin, amphorae of wine and olives. I carry it secretly under my skin because it is easier. I carry everything under my skin, so lightly I barely notice, watching from the ramparts the dangerous rocky anchorage below where goods and evils, bundled together and tied, arrive, waiting to be unloaded and poured out into a welcoming country.

I found in you a holy place apart, Sublime endurance, God in man revealed, Where mending broken bodies slowly healed My broken heart