Wednesday, July 05, 2006


I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimallight of the stars,
The trees and the flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

-Sylvia Plath

6 comments:

siti* said...

that poem is just sad. to me, it's just ironic how one may deem oneself to be insignificant as compared to everyone else but in the meantime, everyone else think themselves insignificant as compared to everybody else.

Faith said...

isn't it. :/ knowing her background makes things worse, or better, depending on how you look at it.

. p r i c k . said...

Lovely..

Miao 妙 said...

Beautiful.

ak said...

nice.

ak said...

Its a nice poem, shows the irony of life. You can't have all the good things in life.