De Amerikaanse dichteres en schrijfster Sylvia Plath werd geboren op 27 oktober 1932 in Jamaica Plain, een buitenwijk van Boston. Zie ook mijn blog van 27 oktober 2010 en eveneens alle tags voor Sylvia Plath op dit blog.
Child’s Park Stones
In sunless air, under pines
Green to the point of blackness, some
Founding father set these lobed, warped stones
To loom in the leaf-filtered gloom
Black as the charred knuckle-bones
Of a giant or extinct
Animal, come from another
Age, another planet surely. Flanked
By the orange and fuchsia bonfire
Of azaleas, sacrosanct
These stones guard a dark repose
And keep their shapes intact while sun
Alters shadows of rose and iris —
Long, short, long — in the lit garden
And kindles a day’s-end blaze
Colored to dull the pigment
Of azaleas, yet burnt out
Quick as they. To follow the light’s tint
And intensity by midnight
By noon and throughout the brunt
Of various weathers is
To know the still heart of the stones:
Stones that take the whole summer to lose
Their dream of the winter’s cold; stones
Warming at core only as
Frost forms. No man’s crowbar could
Uproot them: their beards are ever-
Green. Nor do they, once in a hundred
Years, go down to drink the river:
No thirst disturbs a stone’s bed.
Doom of Exiles
Now we, returning from the vaulted domes
Of our colossal sleep, come home to find
A tall metropolis of catacombs
Erected down the gangways of our mind.
Green alleys where we reveled have become
The infernal haunt of demon dangers;
Both seraph song and violins are dumb;
Each clock tick consecrates the death of strangers
Backward we traveled to reclaim the day
Before we fell, like Icarus, undone;
All we find are altars in decay
And profane words scrawled black across the sun.
Still, stubbornly we try to crack the nut
In which the riddle of our race is shut.
Family Reunion
Outside in the street I hear
A car door slam; voices coming near;
Incoherent scraps of talk
And high heels clicking up the walk;
The doorbell rends the noonday heat
With copper claws;
A second’s pause.
The dull drums of my pulses beat
Against a silence wearing thin.
The door now opens from within.
Oh, hear the clash of people meeting —
The laughter and the screams of greeting :
Fat always, and out of breath,
A greasy smack on every cheek
From Aunt Elizabeth;
There, that’s the pink, pleased squeak
Of Cousin Jane, out spinster with
The faded eyes
And hands like nervous butterflies;
While rough as splintered wood
Across them all
Rasps the jarring baritone of Uncle Paul;
The youngest nephew gives a fretful whine
And drools at the reception line.
Like a diver on a lofty spar of land
Atop the flight of stairs I stand.
A whirlpool leers at me,
I cast off my identity
And make the fatal plunge.
Sylvia Plath (27 oktober 1932 – 11 februari 1963)
Hier met dichter en echtgenoot Ted Hughes