I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus <br />With tigery stripes, and a face on it <br />Round as the moon, to stare up. <br />I want to be looking at them when they come <br />Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots. <br />I see them already -- the pale, star-distance faces. <br />Now they are nothing, they are not even babies. <br />I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods. <br />They will wonder if I was important. <br />I should sugar and preserve my days like fruit! <br />My mirror is clouding over -- <br />A few more breaths, and it will reflect nothing at all. <br />The flowers and the faces whiten to a sheet. <br /> <br />I do not trust the spirit. It escapes like steam <br />In dreams, through mouth-hole or eye-hole. I can't stop it. <br />One day it won't come back. Things aren't like that. <br />They stay, their little particular lusters <br />Warmed by much handling. They almost purr. <br />When the soles of my feet grow cold, <br />The blue eye of my tortoise will comfort me. <br />Let me have my copper cooking pots, let my rouge pots <br />Bloom about me like night flowers, with a good smell. <br />They will roll me up in bandages, they will store my heart <br />Under my feet in a neat parcel. <br />I shall hardly know myself. It will be dark, <br />And the shine of these small things sweeter than the face of Ishtar.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/last-words/
