Purdah
Sylvia Plath * Track #3 On Winter Trees
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Album Winter Trees
Purdah by Sylvia Plath
Performed by
Sylvia PlathAbout
Purdah is the term used to describe the practice of female seclusion (by means of clothing and screens) associated with certain Muslim and Hindu societies.
This poem has been described as a call for revenge against oppressive patriarchal forces, describing a process of shedding of the shackles and t...
Purdah Annotated
Jade---
Stone of the side,
The antagonized
Side of green Adam, I
Smile, cross-legged,
Enigmatical,
Shifting my clarities.
So valuable!
How the sun polishes this shoulder!
And should
The moon, my
Indefatigable cousin
Rise, with her cancerous pallors,
Dragging trees ---
Little bushy polyps,
Little nets,
My visibilities hide.
I gleam like a mirror.
At this facet the bridegroom arrives
Lord of the mirrors!
It is himself he guides
In among these silk
Screens, these rustling appurtenances.
I breathe, and the mouth
Veil stirs its curtain
My eye
Veil is
A concatenation of rainbows.
I am his.
Even in his
Absence, I
Revolve in my
Sheath of impossibles,
Priceless and quiet
Among these parrakeets, macaws!
O chatterers
Attendants of the eyelash!
I shall unloose
One feather, like the peacock.
Attendants of the lip!
I shall unloose
One note
Shattering
The chandelier
Of air that all day flies
Its crystals
A million ignorants.
Attendants!
Attendants!
And at his next step
I shall unloose
I shall unloose ---
From the small jeweled
Doll he guards like a heart ---
The lioness,
The shriek in the bath,
The cloak of holes.