Free Selected Poems of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath Page B

creaming on those ledges.

The Hermit at Outermost House
    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 by much rock-bumping
    And claw-threat, realized that.
    For what, then, had they endured
    Dourly the long hots and colds,
    Those old despots, if he sat
    Laugh-shaken on his doorsill,
    Backbone unbendable as
    Timbers of his upright hut?
    Hard gods were there, nothing else.
    Still he thumbed out something else.
    Thumbed no stony, horny pot,
    But a certain meaning green.
    He withstood them, that hermit.
    Rock-face, crab-claw verged on green.
    Gulls mulled in the greenest light.

Medallion
    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, his jaw
    Unhinged and his grin crooked,
    Tongue a rose-colored arrow.
    Over my hand I hung him.
    His little vermilion eye
    Ignited with a glassed flame
    As I turned him in the light;
    When I split a rock one time
    The garnet bits burned like that.
    Dust dulled his back to ochre
    The way sun ruins a trout.
    Yet his belly kept its fire
    Going under the chainmail,
    The old jewels smoldering there
    In each opaque belly-scale:
    Sunset looked at through milk glass.
    And I saw white maggots coil
    Thin as pins in the dark bruise
    Where his innards bulged as if
    He were digesting a mouse.

    Knifelike, he was chaste enough,
    Pure death’s-metal. The yardman’s
    Flung brick perfected his laugh.

The Manor Garden
    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 the lake.
    You move through the era of fishes,
    The smug centuries of the pig –
    Head, toe and finger
    Come clear of the shadow. History
    Nourishes these broken flutings,
    These crowns of acanthus,
    And the crow settles her garments.
    You inherit white heather, a bee’s wing,
    Two suicides, the family wolves,
    Hours of blankness. Some hard stars
    Already yellow the heavens.
    The spider on its own string
    Crosses the lake. The worms
    Quit their usual habitations.
    The small birds converge, converge
    With their gifts to a difficult borning.

The Stones
    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 the light. I entered
    The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard.
    The mother of pestles diminished me.
    I became a still pebble.
    The stones of the belly were peaceable,
    The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing.
    Only the mouth-hole piped out,
    Importunate cricket
    In a quarry of silences.
    The people of the city heard it.
    They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate,
    The mouth-hole crying their locations.
    Drunk as a foetus
    I suck at the paps of darkness.
    The food tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens away.
    The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry
    Open one stone eye.
    This is the after-hell: I see the light.
    A wind unstoppers the chamber
    Of the ear, old worrier.

    Water mollifies the flint lip,
    And daylight lays its sameness on the wall.
    The grafters are cheerful,
    Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers.
    A current agitates the wires
    Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures.
    A workman walks by carrying a pink torso.
    The storerooms are full of hearts.
    This is the city of spare parts.
    My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber.
    Here they can doctor heads, or any limb.
    On Fridays the little children come
    To trade their hooks for hands.
    Dead men leave eyes for others.
    Love is the uniform of my bald nurse.
    Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.
    The vase, reconstructed, houses
    The elusive rose.
    Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows.
    My mendings itch. There is nothing to do.
    I shall be good as new.

The Burnt-Out Spa
    An old beast ended in this place:
    A monster of wood and rusty teeth.
    Fire smelted his eyes