Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
This is not what I meant:
Stucco arches, the banked rocks sunning in rows,
Bald eyes or petrified eggs,
Grownups coffined in stockings and jackets,
Lard-pale, sipping the thin
Air like a medicine.
The stopped horse on his chromium pole
Stares through us; his hooves chew the breeze.
Your shirt of crisp linen
Bloats like a spinnaker. Hat brims
Deflect the watery dazzle; the people idle
As if in hospital.
I can smell the salt, all right.
At our feet, the weed-mustachioed sea
Exhibits its glaucous silks,
Bowing and truckling like an old-school oriental.
You're no happier than I about it.
A policeman points out a vacant cliff
Green as a pool table, where cabbage butterflies
Peel off to sea as gulls do,
And we picnic in the death-stench of a hawthorn.
The waves pulse like hearts.
Beached under the spumy blooms, we lie
Sea-sick and fever-dry.