The month of flowering's finished. The fruit's in, <br />Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth. <br />October's the month for storage. <br /> <br />Thie shed's fusty as a mummy's stomach: <br />Old tools, handles and rusty tusks. <br />I am at home here among the dead heads. <br /> <br />Let me sit in a flowerpot, <br />The spiders won't notice. <br />My heart is a stopped geranium. <br /> <br />If only the wind would leave my lungs alone. <br />Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down. <br />They rattle like hydrangea bushes. <br /> <br />Mouldering heads console me, <br />Nailed to the rafters yesterday: <br />Inmates who don't hibernate. <br /> <br />Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze, <br />A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted, <br />Their veins white as porkfat. <br /> <br />O the beauty of usage! <br />The orange pumpkins have no eyes. <br />These halls are full of women who think they are birds. <br /> <br />This is a dull school. <br />I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet, <br />Without dreams of any sort. <br /> <br />Mother, you are the one mouth <br />I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness <br />Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways. <br /> <br />I said: I must remember this, being small. <br />There were such enormous flowers, <br />Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely. <br /> <br />The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry. <br />Now they light me up like an electric bulb. <br />For weeks I can remember nothing at all.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/who-114/
