Once I was ordinary:
Sat by my father's bean tree
Eating the fingers of wisdom.
The birds made milk.
When it thundered I hid under a flat stone.
The mother of mouths didn't love me.
The old man shrank to a doll.
O I am too big to go backward:
Birdmilk is feathers,
The bean leaves are dumb as hands.
This month is fit for little.
The dead ripen in the grapeleaves.
A red tongue is among us.
Mother, keep out of my barnyard,
I am becoming another.
Dog-head, devourer:
Feed me the berries of dark.
The lids won't shut. Time
Unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun
Its endless glitter.
I must swallow it all.
Lady, who are these others in the moon's vat --
Sleepdrunk, their limbs at odds?
In this light the blood is black.
Tell me my name.
Maenad
Sylvia Plath
(1)
Poem topics: dark, dog, father, light, moon, red, sun, time, tree, wisdom, doll, head, tongue, great, milk, flat, feed, endless, lady, black, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about Maenad poem by Sylvia Plath
Best Poems of Sylvia Plath