Sylvia Plath




Wuthering Heights

The horizons ring me like faggots, 
Tilted and disparate, and always unstable. 
Touched by a match, they might warm me, 
And their fine lines singe 
The air to orange 
Before the distances they pin evaporate, 
Weighting the pale sky with a soldier color. 
But they only dissolve and dissolve 
Like a series of promises, as I step forward. 

There is no life higher than the grasstops 
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind 
Pours by like destiny, bending 
Everything in one direction. 
I can feel it trying 
To funnel my heat away. 
If I pay the roots of the heather 
Too close attention, they will invite me 
To whiten my bones among them. 

The sheep know where they are, 
Browsing in their dirty wool-clouds, 
Gray as the weather. 
The black slots of their pupils take me in. 
It is like being mailed into space, 
A thin, silly message. 
They stand about in grandmotherly disguise, 
All wig curls and yellow teeth 
And hard, marbly baas. 

I come to wheel ruts, and water 
Limpid as the solitudes 
That flee through my fingers. 
Hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass; 
Lintel and sill have unhinged themselves. 
Of people and the air only 
Remembers a few odd syllables. 
It rehearses them moaningly: 
Black stone, black stone. 

The sky leans on me, me, the one upright 
Among all horizontals. 
The grass is beating its head distractedly. 
It is too delicate 
For a life in such company; 
Darkness terrifies it. 
Now, in valleys narrow 
And black as purses, the house lights 
Gleam like small change.