I Want, I Want

Sylvia Plath

Open-mouthed, the baby god

Immense, bald, though baby-headed,
Cried out for the mother's dug.
The dry volcanoes cracked and split,

Sand abraded the milkless lip.

Cried then for the father's blood
Who set wasp, wolf and shark to work,
Engineered the gannet's beak.

Dry-eyed, the inveterate patriarch

Raised his men of skin and bone,
Barbs on the crown of gilded wire,
Thorns on the bloody rose-stem.

Song For A Summer's Day

Sylvia Plath
Through fen and farmland walking
With my own country love
I saw slow flocked cows move
White hulks on their day's cruising;
Sweet grass sprang for their grazing.

The air was bright for looking:

Most far in blue, aloft,
Clouds steered a burnished drift;
Larks' nip and tuck arising
Came in for my love's praising.

Sheen of the noonsun striking

Took my heart as if
It were a green-tipped leaf
Kindled by my love's pleasing
Into an ardent blazing.

And so, together, talking,

Through Sunday's honey-air
We walked (and still walk there—-
Out of the sun's bruising)
Till the night mists came rising.