Best Famous Silk Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Silk poems. This is a select list of the best famous Silk poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Silk poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of silk poems.

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• All Famous Silk Poems

Written by Sylvia Plath | Letter In November 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 the Arctic, This little black Circle, with its tawn silk grasses - babies hair. There is a green in the air, Soft, delectable. It cushions me lovingly. I am flushed and warm. I think I may be enormous, I am so stupidly happy, My Wellingtons Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red. This is my property. Two times a day I pace it, sniffing The barbarous holly with its viridian Scallops, pure iron, And the wall of the odd corpses. I love them. I love them like history. The apples are golden, Imagine it ---- My seventy trees Holding their gold-ruddy balls In a thick gray death-soup, Their million Gold leaves metal and breathless. O love, O celibate. Nobody but me Walks the waist high wet. The irreplaceable Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.

Written by Marianne Moore | Marriage This institution, perhaps one should say enterprise out of respect for which one says one need not change one's mind about a thing one has believed in, requiring public promises of one's intention to fulfill a private obligation: I wonder what Adam and Eve think of it by this time, this firegilt steel alive with goldenness; how bright it shows -- "of circular traditions and impostures, committing many spoils," requiring all one's criminal ingenuity to avoid! Psychology which explains everything explains nothing and we are still in doubt. Eve: beautiful woman -- I have seen her when she was so handsome she gave me a start, able to write simultaneously in three languages -- English, German and French and talk in the meantime; equally positive in demanding a commotion and in stipulating quiet: "I should like to be alone;" to which the visitor replies, "I should like to be alone; why not be alone together?" Below the incandescent stars below the incandescent fruit, the strange experience of beauty; its existence is too much; it tears one to pieces and each fresh wave of consciousness is poison. "See her, see her in this common world," the central flaw in that first crystal-fine experiment, this amalgamation which can never be more than an interesting possibility, describing it as "that strange paradise unlike flesh, gold, or stately buildings, the choicest piece of my life: the heart rising in its estate of peace as a boat rises with the rising of the water;" constrained in speaking of the serpent -- that shed snakeskin in the history of politeness not to be returned to again -- that invaluable accident exonerating Adam. And he has beauty also; it's distressing -- the O thou to whom, from whom, without whom nothing -- Adam; "something feline, something colubrine" -- how true! a crouching mythological monster in that Persian miniature of emerald mines, raw silk -- ivory white, snow white, oyster white and six others -- that paddock full of leopards and giraffes -- long lemonyellow bodies sown with trapezoids of blue. Alive with words, vibrating like a cymbal touched before it has been struck, he has prophesied correctly -- the industrious waterfall, "the speedy stream which violently bears all before it, at one time silent as the air and now as powerful as the wind. " "Treading chasms on the uncertain footing of a spear," forgetting that there is in woman a quality of mind which is an instinctive manifestation is unsafe, he goes on speaking in a formal, customary strain of "past states," the present state, seals, promises, the evil one suffered, the good one enjoys, hell, heaven, everything convenient to promote one's joy. " There is in him a state of mind by force of which, perceiving what it was not intended that he should, "he experiences a solemn joy in seeing that he has become an idol. " Plagued by the nightingale in the new leaves, with its silence -- not its silence but its silences, he says of it: "It clothes me with a shirt of fire. " "He dares not clap his hands to make it go on lest it should fly off; if he does nothing, it will sleep; if he cries out, it will not understand. " Unnerved by the nightingale and dazzled by the apple, impelled by "the illusion of a fire effectual to extinguish fire," compared with which the shining of the earth is but deformity -- a fire "as high as deep as bright as broad as long as life itself," he stumbles over marriage, "a very trivial object indeed" to have destroyed the attitude in which he stood -- the ease of the philosopher unfathered by a woman. Unhelpful Hymen! "a kind of overgrown cupid" reduced to insignificance by the mechanical advertising parading as involuntary comment, by that experiment of Adam's with ways out but no way in -- the ritual of marriage, augmenting all its lavishness; its fiddle-head ferns, lotus flowers, opuntias, white dromedaries, its hippopotamus -- nose and mouth combined in one magnificent hopper, "the crested screamer -- that huge bird almost a lizard," its snake and the potent apple. He tells us that "for love that will gaze an eagle blind, that is like a Hercules climbing the trees in the garden of the Hesperides, from forty-five to seventy is the best age," commending it as a fine art, as an experiment, a duty or as merely recreation. One must not call him ruffian nor friction a calamity -- the fight to be affectionate: "no truth can be fully known until it has been tried by the tooth of disputation. " The blue panther with black eyes, the basalt panther with blue eyes, entirely graceful -- one must give them the path -- the black obsidian Diana who "darkeneth her countenance as a bear doth, causing her husband to sigh," the spiked hand that has an affection for one and proves it to the bone, impatient to assure you that impatience is the mark of independence not of bondage. "Married people often look that way" -- "seldom and cold, up and down, mixed and malarial with a good day and bad. " "When do we feed?" We occidentals are so unemotional, we quarrel as we feed; one's self is quite lost, the irony preserved in "the Ahasuerus t?te ? t?te banquet" with its "good monster, lead the way," with little laughter and munificence of humor in that quixotic atmosphere of frankness in which "Four o'clock does not exist but at five o'clock the ladies in their imperious humility are ready to receive you"; in which experience attests that men have power and sometimes one is made to feel it. He says, "what monarch would not blush to have a wife with hair like a shaving-brush? The fact of woman is not `the sound of the flute but every poison. '" She says, "`Men are monopolists of stars, garters, buttons and other shining baubles' -- unfit to be the guardians of another person's happiness. " He says, "These mummies must be handled carefully -- `the crumbs from a lion's meal, a couple of shins and the bit of an ear'; turn to the letter M and you will find that `a wife is a coffin,' that severe object with the pleasing geometry stipulating space and not people, refusing to be buried and uniquely disappointing, revengefully wrought in the attitude of an adoring child to a distinguished parent. " She says, "This butterfly, this waterfly, this nomad that has `proposed to settle on my hand for life. ' -- What can one do with it? There must have been more time in Shakespeare's day to sit and watch a play. You know so many artists are fools. " He says, "You know so many fools who are not artists. " The fact forgot that "some have merely rights while some have obligations," he loves himself so much, he can permit himself no rival in that love. She loves herself so much, she cannot see herself enough -- a statuette of ivory on ivory, the logical last touch to an expansive splendor earned as wages for work done: one is not rich but poor when one can always seem so right. What can one do for them -- these savages condemned to disaffect all those who are not visionaries alert to undertake the silly task of making people noble? This model of petrine fidelity who "leaves her peaceful husband only because she has seen enough of him" -- that orator reminding you, "I am yours to command. " "Everything to do with love is mystery; it is more than a day's work to investigate this science. " One sees that it is rare -- that striking grasp of opposites opposed each to the other, not to unity, which in cycloid inclusiveness has dwarfed the demonstration of Columbus with the egg -- a triumph of simplicity -- that charitive Euroclydon of frightening disinterestedness which the world hates, admitting: "I am such a cow, if I had a sorrow, I should feel it a long time; I am not one of those who have a great sorrow in the morning and a great joy at noon;" which says: "I have encountered it among those unpretentious proteg?s of wisdom, where seeming to parade as the debater and the Roman, the statesmanship of an archaic Daniel Webster persists to their simplicity of temper as the essence of the matter: `Liberty and union now and forever;' the book on the writing-table; the hand in the breast-pocket. "

Written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning | The Deserted Garden I MIND me in the days departed, How often underneath the sun With childish bounds I used to run To a garden long deserted. The beds and walks were vanish'd quite; 5 And wheresoe'er had struck the spade, The greenest grasses Nature laid, To sanctify her right. I call'd the place my wilderness, For no one enter'd there but I. 10 The sheep look'd in, the grass to espy, And pass'd it ne'ertheless. The trees were interwoven wild, And spread their boughs enough about To keep both sheep and shepherd out, 15 But not a happy child. Adventurous joy it was for me! I crept beneath the boughs, and found A circle smooth of mossy ground Beneath a poplar-tree. 20 Old garden rose-trees hedged it in, Bedropt with roses waxen-white, Well satisfied with dew and light, And careless to be seen. Long years ago, it might befall, 25 When all the garden flowers were trim, The grave old gardener prided him On these the most of all. Some Lady, stately overmuch, Here moving with a silken noise, 30 Has blush'd beside them at the voice That liken'd her to such. Or these, to make a diadem, She often may have pluck'd and twined; Half-smiling as it came to mind, 35 That few would look at them. O, little thought that Lady proud, A child would watch her fair white rose, When buried lay her whiter brows, And silk was changed for shroud!¡ª 40 Nor thought that gardener (full of scorns For men unlearn'd and simple phrase) A child would bring it all its praise, By creeping through the thorns! To me upon my low moss seat, 45 Though never a dream the roses sent Of science or love's compliment, I ween they smelt as sweet. It did not move my grief to see The trace of human step departed: 50 Because the garden was deserted, The blither place for me! Friends, blame me not! a narrow ken Hath childhood 'twixt the sun and sward: We draw the moral afterward¡ª 55 We feel the gladness then. And gladdest hours for me did glide In silence at the rose-tree wall: A thrush made gladness musical Upon the other side. 60 Nor he nor I did e'er incline To peck or pluck the blossoms white:¡ª How should I know but that they might Lead lives as glad as mine? To make my hermit-home complete, 65 I brought clear water from the spring Praised in its own low murmuring, And cresses glossy wet. And so, I thought, my likeness grew (Without the melancholy tale) 70 To 'gentle hermit of the dale,' And Angelina too. For oft I read within my nook Such minstrel stories; till the breeze Made sounds poetic in the trees, 75 And then I shut the book. If I shut this wherein I write, I hear no more the wind athwart Those trees, nor feel that childish heart Delighting in delight. 80 My childhood from my life is parted, My footstep from the moss which drew Its fairy circle round: anew The garden is deserted. Another thrush may there rehearse 85 The madrigals which sweetest are; No more for me!¡ªmyself afar Do sing a sadder verse. Ah me! ah me! when erst I lay In that child's-nest so greenly wrought, 90 I laugh'd unto myself and thought, 'The time will pass away. ' And still I laugh'd, and did not fear But that, whene'er was pass'd away The childish time, some happier play 95 My womanhood would cheer. I knew the time would pass away; And yet, beside the rose-tree wall, Dear God, how seldom, if at all, Did I look up to pray! 100 The time is past: and now that grows The cypress high among the trees, And I behold white sepulchres As well as the white rose,¡ª When wiser, meeker thoughts are given, 105 And I have learnt to lift my face, Reminded how earth's greenest place The colour draws from heaven,¡ª It something saith for earthly pain, But more for heavenly promise free, 110 That I who was, would shrink to be That happy child again.

Written by Ruth Padel | WRITING TO ONEGIN (After Pushkin) Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk And passionate cold feet Summoning music of the night - tumbrils, gongs And gamelans - with one neat pen, one candle Puttering its life out hour by hour. Is "Tell Him I love him" never a good idea? You can't wish this Unlived - this world on fire, on storm Alert, till the shepherd's song Outside, some hyper-active yellowhammer, bulbul, Wren, amplified in hills and woods, tell her to bestow A spot of notice on the dawn. * "I'm writing to you. Well, that's it, that's everything. You'll laugh, but you'll pity me too. I'm ashamed of this. I meant to keep it quiet. You'd never have known, if - I wish - I could have seen you once a week. To mull over, day And night, the things you say, or what we say together. But word is, you're misogynist. Laddish. A philanderer Who says what he doesn't mean. (That's not how you come across To me. ) Who couldn't give a toss for domestic peace - Only for celebrity and showing off - And won't hang round in a provincial zone Like this. We don't glitter. Though we do, Warmly, truly, welcome you. * "Why did you come? I'd never have set eyes On a star like you, or blundered up against This crazed not-sleeping, hour after hour In the dark. I might have got the better of My clumsy fury with constraint, my fret For things I lack all lexica and phrase-book art To say. I might have been a faithful wife; a mother. But that's all done with. This is Fate. God. Sorted. Here I am - yours, to the last breath. I couldn't give my heart to anyone else. My life till now has been a theorem, to demonstrate How right it is to love you. This love is love to death. * "I knew you anyway. I loved you, I'm afraid, In my sleep. Your eyes, that denim-lapis, grey-sea- Grey-green blue, that Chinese fold of skin At the inner corner, that shot look Bleeping "vulnerable" under the screensaver charm, Kept me alive. Every cell, every last gold atom Of your body, was engraved in me Already. Don't tell me that was dream! When you came in, Staring round in your stripey coat and brocade Vest, I nearly died! I fainted, I was flame! I recognized The you I'd always listened to alone, when I wrote Or tried to wrestle my scatty soul into calm. * "Wasn't it you who slipped through the transparent Darkness to my bed and whispered love? Aren't you My guardian angel? Or is this arrant Seeming, hallucination, thrown Up by that fly engineering a novel does So beguilingly, or poems? Is this mad? Are there ways of dreaming I don't know? Too bad. My soul has made its home In you. I'm here and bare before you: shy, In tears. But if I didn't heft my whole self up and hold it there - A crack-free mirror - loving you, or if I couldn't share It, set it out in words, I'd die. * "I'll wait to hear from you. I must. Please let me hope. Give me one look, from eyes I hardly dare To look back at. Or scupper my dream By scolding me. I've given you rope To hang me: tell me I'm mistaken. You're so much in The world; while I just live here, bent on jam And harvest, songs and books. That's not complaint. We live such different lives. So - this is the end. It's taken All night. I'm scared to read it back. I'm faint With shame and fear. But this is what I am. My crumpled bed, My words, my open self. All I can do is trust The whole damn lot of it to you. " * She sighs. The paper trembles as she presses down The pink wax seal. Outside, a milk mist clears From the shimmering valley. If I were her guardian Angel, I'd divide myself. One half would holler Don't! Stay on an even keel! Don't dollop over All you are, to a man who'll go to town On his next little fling. If he's entranced today By the way you finger your silk throat inside your collar, Tomorrow there'll be Olga, Sally, Jane. But then I'd whisper Go for it, petal. Nothing's as real as what you write. His funeral, if he's not up to it. What we feel Is mortal, and won't come again. * So cut, weeks later, to an outside shot: the same girl Taking cover ("Dear God, he's here, he's come!") Under fat red gooseberries, glimmering hairy stars: The old, rude bushes she has hide-and-seeked in all Her life, where mother commands the serfs to sing While picking, so they can't hurl The odd gog into their mouths. No one could spy Her here, not even the sun in its burn-time. Her cheeks Are simmering fire. We're talking iridescence, a Red Admiral's last tremble Before the avid schoolboy plunks his net. Or imagine * A leveret - like the hare you shot, remember? Which ran round screaming like a baby? Only mine is shivering in papery winter corn, While the hunter (as it might be, you) stomps his Hush Puppies through dead brush. Everything's quiet. She's waited - how long? - ages: stoking pebbly embers Under the evening samovar, filling The Chinese teapot, sending coils of Lapsang Suchong Floating to the ceiling in the shadows, tracing O and E In the window's black reflection, one finger Tendrilling her own breath on the glass. Like putting a shell to your ear to hear the sea * When it's really your own red little sparkle, the echo Of marching blood. She's asking a phantom World of pearled-up mist for proof That her man exists: that gamelans and tumbrils Won't evade her. But now, among The kitchen garden's rose-haws, mallow, Pernod- Coloured pears, she unhooks herself thorn by thorn For the exit aria. For fade-out. Suddenly there he is In the avenue, the man she's written to - Charon Gazing at her with blazing eyes! Darth Vader From Star Wars. She's trapped, in a house she didn't realize Was burning. Her letter was a gate to the inferno. . . . . . . . . (This poem appeared in Pushkin: An Anthology, ed. E. Feinstein, Carcanet 1999)

Written by Christina Rossetti | A Birthday My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; My heart is like an apple-tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow shell That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these Because my love is come to me. Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it in doves and pomegranates, And peacocks with a hundred eyes; Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys; Because the birthday of my life Is come, my love is come to me.

Written by Sylvia Plath | Balloons Since Christmas they have lived with us, Guileless and clear, Oval soul-animals, Taking up half the space, Moving and rubbing on the silk Invisible air drifts, Giving a shriek and pop When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling. Yellow cathead, blue fish ---- Such ***** moons we live with Instead of dead furniture! Straw mats, white walls And these traveling Globes of thin air, red, green, Delighting The heart like wishes or free Peacocks blessing Old ground with a feather Beaten in starry metals. Your small Brother is making His balloon squeak like a cat. Seeming to see A funny pink world he might eat on the other side of it, He bites, Then sits Back, fat jug Contemplating a world clear as water. A red Shred in his little fist.

Written by Marge Piercy | My Mothers Body 1. The dark socket of the year the pit, the cave where the sun lies down and threatens never to rise, when despair descends softly as the snow covering all paths and choking roads: then hawkfaced pain seized you threw you so you fell with a sharp cry, a knife tearing a bolt of silk. My father heard the crash but paid no mind, napping after lunch yet fifteen hundred miles north I heard and dropped a dish. Your pain sunk talons in my skull and crouched there cawing, heavy as a great vessel filled with water, oil or blood, till suddenly next day the weight lifted and I knew your mind had guttered out like the Chanukah candles that burn so fast, weeping veils of wax down the chanukiya. Those candles were laid out, friends invited, ingredients bought for latkes and apple pancakes, that holiday for liberation and the winter solstice when tops turn like little planets. Shall you have all or nothing take half or pass by untouched? Nothing you got, Nun said the dreydl as the room stopped spinning. The angel folded you up like laundry your body thin as an empty dress. Your clothes were curtains hanging on the window of what had been your flesh and now was glass. Outside in Florida shopping plazas loudspeakers blared Christmas carols and palm trees were decked with blinking lights. Except by the tourist hotels, the beaches were empty. Pelicans with pregnant pouches flapped overhead like pterodactyls. In my mind I felt you die. First the pain lifted and then you flickered and went out. 2. I walk through the rooms of memory. Sometimes everything is shrouded in dropcloths, every chair ghostly and muted. Other times memory lights up from within bustling scenes acted just the other side of a scrim through which surely I could reach my fingers tearing at the flimsy curtain of time which is and isn't and will be the stuff of which we're made and unmade. In sleep the other night I met you, seventeen your first nasty marriage just annulled, thin from your abortion, clutching a book against your cheek and trying to look older, trying to took middle class, trying for a job at Wanamaker's, dressing for parties in cast off stage costumes of your sisters. Your eyes were hazy with dreams. You did not notice me waving as you wandered past and I saw your slip was showing. You stood still while I fixed your clothes, as if I were your mother. Remember me combing your springy black hair, ringlets that seemed metallic, glittering; remember me dressing you, my seventy year old mother who was my last dollbaby, giving you too late what your youth had wanted. 3. What is this mask of skin we wear, what is this dress of flesh, this coat of few colors and little hair? This voluptuous seething heap of desires and fears, squeaking mice turned up in a steaming haystack with their babies? This coat has been handed down, an heirloom this coat of black hair and ample flesh, this coat of pale slightly ruddy skin. This set of hips and thighs, these buttocks they provided cushioning for my grandmother Hannah, for my mother Bert and for me and we all sat on them in turn, those major muscles on which we walk and walk and walk over the earth in search of peace and plenty. My mother is my mirror and I am hers. What do we see? Our face grown young again, our breasts grown firm, legs lean and elegant. Our arms quivering with fat, eyes set in the bark of wrinkles, hands puffy, our belly seamed with childbearing, Give me your dress that I might try it on. Oh it will not fit you mother, you are too fat. I will not fit you mother. I will not be the bride you can dress, the obedient dutiful daughter you would chew, a dog's leather bone to sharpen your teeth. You strike me sometimes just to hear the sound. Loneliness turns your fingers into hooks barbed and drawing blood with their caress. My twin, my sister, my lost love, I carry you in me like an embryo as once you carried me. 4. What is it we turn from, what is it we fear? Did I truly think you could put me back inside? Did I think I would fall into you as into a molten furnace and be recast, that I would become you? What did you fear in me, the child who wore your hair, the woman who let that black hair grow long as a banner of darkness, when you a proper flapper wore yours cropped? You pushed and you pulled on my rubbery flesh, you kneaded me like a ball of dough. Rise, rise, and then you pounded me flat. Secretly the bones formed in the bread. I became willful, private as a cat. You never knew what alleys I had wandered. You called me bad and I posed like a gutter queen in a dress sewn of knives. All I feared was being stuck in a box with a lid. A good woman appeared to me indistinguishable from a dead one except that she worked all the time. Your payday never came. Your dreams ran with bright colors like Mexican cottons that bled onto the drab sheets of the day and would not bleach with scrubbing. My dear, what you said was one thing but what you sang was another, sweetly subversive and dark as blackberries and I became the daughter of your dream. This body is your body, ashes now and roses, but alive in my eyes, my breasts, my throat, my thighs. You run in me a tang of salt in the creek waters of my blood, you sing in my mind like wine. What you did not dare in your life you dare in mine.

Written by Hilaire Belloc | September 1 The golden-rod is yellow; 2 The corn is turning brown; 3 The trees in apple orchards 4 With fruit are bending down. 5 The gentian's bluest fringes 6 Are curling in the sun; 7 In dusty pods the milkweed 8 Its hidden silk has spun. 9 The sedges flaunt their harvest, 10 In every meadow nook; 11 And asters by the brook-side 12 Make asters in the brook, 13 From dewy lanes at morning 14 The grapes' sweet odors rise; 15 At noon the roads all flutter 16 With yellow butterflies. 17 By all these lovely tokens 18 September days are here, 19 With summer's best of weather, 20 And autumn's best of cheer. 21 But none of all this beauty 22 Which floods the earth and air 23 Is unto me the secret 24 Which makes September fair. 25 'T is a thing which I remember; 26 To name it thrills me yet: 27 One day of one September 28 I never can forget.

Written by Marge Piercy | What Are Big Girls Made Of? The construction of a woman: a woman is not made of flesh of bone and sinew belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe. She is manufactured like a sports sedan. She is retooled, refitted and redesigned every decade. Cecile had been seduction itself in college. She wriggled through bars like a satin eel, her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed in the dark red lipstick of desire. She visited in '68 still wearing skirts tight to the knees, dark red lipstick, while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt, lipstick pale as apricot milk, hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear, I thought in my superiority of the moment, whatever has happened to poor Cecile? She was out of fashion, out of the game, disqualified, disdained, dis- membered from the club of desire. Look at pictures in French fashion magazines of the 18th century: century of the ultimate lady fantasy wrought of silk and corseting. Paniers bring her hips out three feet each way, while the waist is pinched and the belly flattened under wood. The breasts are stuffed up and out offered like apples in a bowl. The tiny foot is encased in a slipper never meant for walking. On top is a grandiose headache: hair like a museum piece, daily ornamented with ribbons, vases, grottoes, mountains, frigates in full sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy of a hairdresser turned loose. The hats were rococo wedding cakes that would dim the Las Vegas strip. Here is a woman forced into shape rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh: a woman made of pain. How superior we are now: see the modern woman thin as a blade of scissors. She runs on a treadmill every morning, fits herself into machines of weights and pulleys to heave and grunt, an image in her mind she can never approximate, a body of rosy glass that never wrinkles, never grows, never fades. She sits at the table closing her eyes to food hungry, always hungry: a woman made of pain. A cat or dog approaches another, they sniff noses. They sniff asses. They bristle or lick. They fall in love as often as we do, as passionately. But they fall in love or lust with furry flesh, not hoop skirts or push up bras rib removal or liposuction. It is not for male or female dogs that poodles are clipped to topiary hedges. If only we could like each other raw. If only we could love ourselves like healthy babies burbling in our arms. If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed to need what is sold us. Why should we want to live inside ads? Why should we want to scourge our softness to straight lines like a Mondrian painting? Why should we punish each other with scorn as if to have a large ass were worse than being greedy or mean? When will women not be compelled to view their bodies as science projects, gardens to be weeded, dogs to be trained? When will a woman cease to be made of pain?

Written by Sylvia Plath | Lesbos Viciousness in the kitchen! The potatoes hiss. It is all Hollywood, windowless, The fluorescent light wincing on and off like a terrible migraine, Coy paper strips for doors -- Stage curtains, a widow's frizz. And I, love, am a pathological liar, And my child -- look at her, face down on the floor, Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear -- Why she is schizophrenic, Her face is red and white, a panic, You have stuck her kittens outside your window In a sort of cement well Where they crap and puke and cry and she can't hear. You say you can't stand her, The bastard's a girl. You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio Clear of voices and history, the staticky Noise of the new. You say I should drown the kittens. Their smell! You say I should drown my girl. She'll cut her throat at ten if she's mad at two. The baby smiles, fat snail, From the polished lozenges of orange linoleum. You could eat him. He's a boy. You say your husband is just no good to you. His Jew-Mama guards his sweet sex like a pearl. You have one baby, I have two. I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair. I should wear tiger pants, I should have an affair. We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, Me and you. Meanwhile there's a stink of fat and baby crap. I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill. The smog of cooking, the smog of hell Floats our heads, two venemous opposites, Our bones, our hair. I call you Orphan, orphan. You are ill. The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T. B. Once you were beautiful. In New York, in Hollywood, the men said: 'Through? Gee baby, you are rare. ' You acted, acted for the thrill. The impotent husband slumps out for a coffee. I try to keep him in, An old pole for the lightning, The acid baths, the skyfuls off of you. He lumps it down the plastic cobbled hill, Flogged trolley. The sparks are blue. The blue sparks spill, Splitting like quartz into a million bits. O jewel! O valuable! That night the moon Dragged its blood bag, sick Animal Up over the harbor lights. And then grew normal, Hard and apart and white. The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death. We kept picking up handfuls, loving it, Working it like dough, a mulatto body, The silk grits. A dog picked up your doggy husband. He went on. Now I am silent, hate Up to my neck, Thick, thick. I do not speak. I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes, I am packing the babies, I am packing the sick cats. O vase of acid, It is love you are full of. You know who you hate. He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate That opens to the sea Where it drives in, white and black, Then spews it back. Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher. You are so exhausted. Your voice my ear-ring, Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat. That is that. That is that. You peer from the door, Sad hag. 'Every woman's a whore. I can't communicate. ' I see your cute décor Close on you like the fist of a baby Or an anemone, that sea Sweetheart, that kleptomaniac. I am still raw. I say I may be back. You know what lies are for. Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet.