Barren Woman, Sylvia Plath

Empty, I echo to the least footfall,
Museum without statues, grand with pillars,
porticoes, rotundas.
In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks
back into itself,
Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies
Exhale their pallor like scent.

I imagine myself with a great public,
Mother of a white Nike and several bald-eyed Apollos.
Insread, the dead injure me attentions, and nothing
can

A Birthday Present

What is this, behind this veil, is it ugly, is it beautiful?It is shimmering, has it breasts, has it edges?I am sure it is unique, I am sure it is what I want.When I am quiet at my cooking I feel it looking, I feel it thinking'Is this the one I am too appear for,Is this the elect one, the one with black eye-pits and a scar?Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,Adhering to rules, to rules,

Alicante Lullaby, by Sylvia Plath

In Alicante they bowl the barrels
Bumblingly over the nubs of the cobbles
Past the yellow-paella eateries,
Below the ramshackle back-alley balconies,
While the cocks and hens
In the roofgardens
Scuttle repose with crowns and cackles.

Kumquat-colored trolleys ding as they trundle
Passengers under an indigo fizzle
Needling spumily down from the wires:
Alongside the sibliant narhor the lovers
Hear

Full Fathom Five

Old man, you surface seldom.Then you come in with the tide's comingWhen seas wash cold, foam-Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,A dragnet, rising, falling, as wavesCrest and trough. Miles longExtend the radial sheavesOf your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeinsKnotted, caught, survivesThe old myth of orginsUnimaginable. You float nearAs kneeled ice-mountainsOf the north, to be steered