Child

(Mother and Child by Paul Klee, 1879-1940, Swiss
painter)

Some of Sylvia Plath’s poems are intense expressions of her inner turmoil. They can be difficult to read.

This poem reveals her deep conflict within. As a mother, she writes tenderly and hopefully of the happiness she wishes for her child. But then, in the final stanza, she cannot avoid exposing her own pessimism and pain.

Two weeks after writing this, she committed suicide, leaving two children behind. She was only thirty years old. Decades later, her husband, the poet Ted Hughes, published a collection of his own verse, Birthday Letters, in which he broke his silence about his grief at losing her.

CHILD

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks.
The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate —
April snowdrops, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wring of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

~ Sylvia Plath (1932-1963), American poet, and writer of novels and short stories

The Baby

(Head of a Child by Paul Klee, 1879-1940,
Swiss painter)

Our affection for our young springs from the mystery of our creation.

THE BABY

Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into the here.

Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through.

What makes the light in them sparkle and spin?
Some of the starry spikes left in.

Where did you get that little tear?
I found it waiting when I got here.

What makes your forehead so smooth and high?
A soft hand stroked it as I went by.

What makes your cheek like a warm white rose?
Something better than any one knows.

Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss?
Three angels gave me at once a kiss.

Where did you get that pearly ear?
God spoke, and it came out to hear.

Where did you get those arms and hands?
Love made itself into hooks and bands.

Feet, whence did you come, you darling things?
From the same box as the cherubs’ wings.

How did they all just come to be you?
God thought about me, and so I grew.

But how did you come to us, you dear?
God thought about you, and so I am here.

~ George MacDonald (1824-1905), Scottish poet

Heat

(Summer Landscape by Paul Klee, 1879-1940,
Swiss painter)

The dog days of summer, those very hot days in July and August, get their name from Sirius or the Dog Star, the brightest star in the Great Dog constellation. The Romans believed the star added to the heat as it rose with the sun.

HEAT

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.

Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air —
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.

Cut the heat —
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

~ H. D., born Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), American Imagist poet and novelist