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| sylvia plath |
i can see why she picked february.
i hate that she was left alone, sick and depressed, with two babies and no support.
"morning poem" has been a go-to poem for me for so many years. i love its metric beauty, that "fat, gold watch" and the way she beautifully and hauntingly describes maternal alienation.
i'd call her a pioneer for this, and maybe she'd have outlasted the hard parts if someone had described how hard and confusing and devastating it can be:
I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.
Morning Song | ||
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
I'm no more your mother
Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow
Effacement at the wind's hand.
All night your moth-breath
Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:
A far sea moves in my ear.
One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
In my Victorian nightgown.
Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square
Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons.
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r.i.p., ms. plath------------>>>
