Sylvia Plath

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

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 gipsy 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