by Sylvia Plath
Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull,dull,dull as the triple.
Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable.
Of licking clean.
The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell.
Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love,the low smoke roll
From me like Isadoras’s scarves, I’m in a fright
One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,
But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak
Hothouse baby in it’s crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging it’s hanging garden in the air,
Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
and killed it in an hour
Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.
Darling,all night.
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grown heavy as a lecher’s kiss.
Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water chicken
Water, water make me retch.
I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern-
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.
Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.
I think I am going up,
I think I may rise-
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I
Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses
By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him
Nor him, nor him
(my Selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)-
To Paradise
*the only poem read by another author yesterday at VDAY poetry reading
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