These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis. <br />They grew their toes and fingers well enough, <br />Their little foreheads bulged with concentration. <br />If they missed out on walking about like people <br />It wasn't for any lack of mother-love. <br /> <br />O I cannot explain what happened to them! <br />They are proper in shape and number and every part. <br />They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid! <br />They smile and smile and smile at me. <br />And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start. <br /> <br />They are not pigs, they are not even fish, <br />Though they have a piggy and a fishy air -- <br />It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were. <br />But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction, <br />And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/stillborn/
