Sylvia Plath

15 poems

This is winter, this is night, small love -- / A sort of black horsehair,

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. / I want to fill it with color and ducks,

The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels, / Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan

In Benidorm there are melons, / Whole donkey-carts full

But I would rather be horizontal. / I am not a tree with my root in the soil

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow, / My tears like vinegar,

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. / Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Overnight, very / Whitely, discreetly,

Never try to trick me with a kiss / Pretending that the birds are here to stay;

Here are two pupils / whose moons of black

Out here there are no hearthstones, / Hot grains, simply. It is dry, dry.

Color of lemon, mango, peach, / These storybook villas

Now this particular girl / During a ceremonious april walk

Blameless as daylight I stood looking / At a field of horses, necks bent, manes blown,

Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone, / plunges headlong into that black pond