I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
I think I made you up inside my head.
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
I think I made you up inside my head.
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
I think I made you up inside my head.
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I think I made you up inside my head.
- Love poem by Sylvia Plath
Conversation Among the Ruins
Through portico of my elegant house you stalk
With your wild furies, disturbing garlands of fruit
And the fabulous lutes and peacocks, rending the net
Of all decorum which holds the whirlwind back.
Now, rich order of walls is fallen; rooks croak
Above the appalling ruin; in bleak light
Of your stormy eye, magic takes flight
Like a daunted witch,
Quitting castle when real days break.
Fractured pillars frame prospects of rock;
While you stand heroic in coat and tie, I sit
Composed in Grecian tunic and psyche-knot,
Rooted to your black look, the play turned tragic:
With such blight wrought on our bankrupt estate,
What ceremony of words can patch the havoc?
- Love poem by Sylvia Plath
This seemed a dreary and wasted life for
a girl with fifteen years of straight A's,
but I knew that's what marriage was like,
because cook and clean and wash was just
what Buddy Willard's mother did from
morning till night, and she was the wife
of a university professor and had been a
private school teacher herself.
- Sylvia Plath
And by the way, everything in life is
writable about if you have the outgoing
guts to do it, and the imagination to
improvise. The worst enemy to creativity
is self-doubt.
- Sylvia Plath
I myself am the vessel
of tragic experience.
- Sylvia Plath