LESBOS(a poem by Sylvia Plath)
(...)And I, love, am a pathological liar,
And my child look at her, face down on the floor,
Little unstrung puppet, kicking to disappear
Why she is schizophrenic,
Her face is red and white, a panic,
You have stuck her kittens outside your window
In a sort of cement well,
Where they crap and puke and cry and she can’t hear.
You say you can’t stand her,
The bastard’s a girl.
You who have blown your tubes like a bad radio,
Clear of voices and history, the staticky noise of the new.
You say I should drown the kittens.
Their smell!
You say I should drown my girl.
(...)You say your husband is just no good to you.
His Jew-Mama guards his sweet sex like a pearl.
You have one baby, I have two.
I should sit on a rock off Cornwall and comb my hair.
I should wear tiger pants,
I should have an affair.
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.
(...)O jewel! O valuable!
That night the moon dragged its blood bag,
Sick animal up over the harbor lights.
And then grew normal,
Hard and apart and white.
The scale-sheen on the sand scared me to death.
We kept picking up handfuls, loving it,
Working it like dough, a mulatto body,
The silk grits.
A dog picked up your doggy husband.
He went on...
(...)
Now I am silent, hate up to my neck,
Now I am silent, hate up to my neck,
Thick, thick.
I do not speak.
I am packing the hard potatoes like good clothes,
I am packing the babies, I am packing the sick cats.
O vase of acid,
It is love you are full of.
You know who you hate.
He is hugging his ball and chain down by the gate,
That opens to the sea... where it drives in,
White and black, then spews it back.
Every day you fill him with soul-stuff, like a pitcher.
You are so exhausted.
Your voice my ear-ring,
Flapping and sucking, blood-loving bat.
That is that. That is that.
You peer from the door, sad hag:
"Every woman’s a whore. I can’t communicate."
(...)
I see your cute decor,
I see your cute decor,
Close on you like the fist of a baby... or an anemone,
That sea sweetheart, that kleptomaniac.
I am still raw.
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for...
Even in your Zen... heaven we shan’t meet..."
Wouldnt it be lovely if love was just a rose?... and you... accepting it just by heart, neverminding the body... just love me in soul? Life would have been much lovelier then...
Sandy
