Sylvia+Plath+-+Daddy

You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time-- Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Scraped flat by the roller <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Of wars, wars, wars. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">But the name of the town is common. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">My Polack friend

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Says there are a dozen or two. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">So I never could tell where you <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Put your foot, your root, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I never could talk to you. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The tongue stuck in my jaw.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">It stuck in a barb wire snare. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Ich, ich, ich, ich, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I could hardly speak. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I thought every German was you. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And the language obscene

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">An engine, an engine <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Chuffing me off like a Jew. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I began to talk like a Jew. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I think I may well be a Jew.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Are not very pure or true. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I may be a bit of a Jew.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I have always been scared of you, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And your neat mustache <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And your Aryan eye, bright blue. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Not God but a swastika <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">So black no sky could squeak through. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Every woman adores a Fascist, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The boot in the face, the brute <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Brute heart of a brute like you.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">You stand at the blackboard, daddy, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">In the picture I have of you, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">A cleft in your chin instead of your foot <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">But no less a devil for that, no not <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Any less the black man who

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Bit my pretty red heart in two. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I was ten when they buried you. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">At twenty I tried to die <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And get back, back, back to you. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I thought even the bones would do.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">But they pulled me out of the sack, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And they stuck me together with glue. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And then I knew what to do. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">I made a model of you, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">A man in black with a Meinkampf look

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And a love of the rack and the screw. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And I said I do, I do. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">So daddy, I'm finally through. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The black telephone's off at the root, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The voices just can't worm through.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">If I've killed one man, I've killed two-- <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">The vampire who said he was you <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And drank my blood for a year, <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Seven years, if you want to know. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Daddy, you can lie back now.

<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">There's a stake in your fat black heart <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And the villagers never liked you. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">They are dancing and stamping on you. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">They always knew it was you. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through