This is not what I meant: <br />Stucco arches, the banked rocks sunning in rows, <br />Bald eyes or petrified eggs, <br />Grownups coffined in stockings and jackets, <br />Lard-pale, sipping the thin <br />Air like a medicine. <br /> <br />The stopped horse on his chromium pole <br />Stares through us; his hooves chew the breeze. <br />Your shirt of crisp linen <br />Bloats like a spinnaker. Hat brims <br />Deflect the watery dazzle; the people idle <br />As if in hospital. <br /> <br />I can smell the salt, all right. <br />At our feet, the weed-mustachioed sea <br />Exhibits its glaucous silks, <br />Bowing and truckling like an old-school oriental. <br />You're no happier than I about it. <br />A policeman points out a vacant cliff <br /> <br />Green as a pool table, where cabbage butterflies <br />Peel off to sea as gulls do, <br />And we picnic in the death-stench of a hawthorn. <br />The waves pulse like hearts. <br />Beached under the spumy blooms, we lie <br />Sea-sick and fever-dry.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/whitsun-2/
