Reading
Plath's poetry is always a gut-wrenching experience, but it's
rewarding,
too, in its own way. 'Graphically macabre, hallucinatory in their
imagery,
but full of ironic wit, technical brilliance, and tremendous emotional
power',
'poetry of this order is a murderous art'.
Today's
offering is all the above and more. As a poem it's astonishingly vivid
and
powerful: the single, insistent rhyme, the almost hysterical repetitions of
phrase,
the multiple layers of meaning and metaphor, and above all, the passion
driving
each and every word - all of these combine to make it an emotional
tour-de-force.
Sylvia
Plath reads her poem Daddy
Daddy
by
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
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 grey 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
Scraped flat by the
roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the
town is common.
My Polack friend
Says there are a dozen
or two.
So I never could tell
where you
Put your foot, your
root,
I never could talk to
you.
The tongue stuck in my
jaw.
It stuck in a barb
wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German
was you.
And the language
obscene
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a
Jew.
A Jew to Dachau,
Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a
Jew.
I think I may well be
a Jew.
The snows of the
Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or
true.
With my gypsy
ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and
my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a
Jew.
I have always been
scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe,
your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye,
bright blue.
Panzer-man,
panzer-man, O You —
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could
squeak through.
Every woman adores a
Fascist,
The boot in the face,
the brute
Brute heart of a brute
like you.
You stand at the
blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have
of you,
A cleft in your chin
instead of your foot
But no less a devil
for that, no not
Any less the black man
who
Bit my pretty red
heart in two.
I was ten when they
buried you.
At twenty I tried to
die
And get back, back,
back to you.
I thought even the
bones would do.
But they pulled me out
of the sack,
And they stuck me
together with glue.
And then I knew what
to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a
Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack
and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally
through.
The black telephone's
off at the root,
The voices just can't
worm through.
If I've killed one
man, I've killed two —
The vampire who said
he was you
and drank my blood for
a year,
Seven years, if you
want to know.
Daddy, you can lie
back now.
There's a stake in
your fat, black heart
And the villagers
never liked you.
They are dancing and
stamping on you.
They always knew it
was you.
Daddy, daddy, you
bastard, I'm through.
