Get Your Premium Membership

Two Views Of A Cadaver Room

 (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 vats clung to them;
The white-smocked boys started working.
The head of his cadaver had caved in,
And she could scarcely make out anything
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather.
A sallow piece of string held it together.

In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow.
He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom.

 (2)

In Brueghel's panorama of smoke and slaughter
Two people only are blind to the carrion army:
He, afloat in the sea of her blue satin
Skirts, sings in the direction
Of her bare shoulder, while she bends,
Finger a leaflet of music, over him,
Both of them deaf to the fiddle in the hands
Of the death's-head shadowing their song.
These Flemish lovers flourish;not for long.

Yet desolation, stalled in paint, spares the little country
Foolish, delicate, in the lower right hand corner.

Poem by Sylvia Plath
Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem - Two Views Of A Cadaver RoomEmail Poem | Create an image from this poem

Poems are below...



Summaries, Analysis, and Information on "Two Views Of A Cadaver Room"

Sorry, no articles found.

More Information

More Poems by Sylvia Plath


Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry