— unpredictable thoughts

Poem Today : Fever 103°

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cer­berus
Who wheezes at the gate. Inca­pable
Of lick­ing clean

The aguey ten­don, the sin, the sin.
The tin­der cries.
The indeli­ble smell

Of a snuffed can­dle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,
Such yel­low sullen smokes
Make their own ele­ment. They will not rise,

But trun­dle round the globe
Chok­ing the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hot­house baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hang­ing its hang­ing gar­den in the air,

Dev­il­ish leop­ard!
Radi­a­tion turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greas­ing the bod­ies of adul­ter­ers
Like Hiroshima ash and eat­ing in.
The sin. The sin.

Dar­ling, all night
I have been flick­er­ing, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or any­one.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern——

My head a moon
Of Japan­ese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infi­nitely del­i­cate and infi­nitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you! And my light!
All by myself I am a huge camel­lia
Glow­ing and com­ing and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise——
The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I

Am a pure acety­lene
Vir­gin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cheru­bim,
By what­ever these pink things mean!
Not you, nor him

Nor him, nor him
(My selves dis­solv­ing, old whore pet­ti­coats)——
To Par­adise.
Sylvia Plath, “Fever 103°” from The Col­lected Poems of Sylvia Plath, edited by Ted Hughes. Copy­right © 1966 and renewed 1994 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted with the per­mis­sion of Harper­Collins Pub­lish­ers, Inc.

Source: Poetry (August 1963).