Little Fugue The yew's black fingers wag; Cold clouds go over. So the deaf and dumb Signal the blind, and are ignored. I like black statements. The featurelessness of that cloud, now! White as an eye all over! The eye of the blind pianist At my table on the ship. He felt for his food. His fingers had the noses of weasels. I couldn't stop looking. He could hear Beethoven: Black yew, white cloud, The horrific complications. Finger-traps—a tumult of keys. Empty and silly as plates, So the blind smile. I envy the big noises, The yew hedge of the Grosse Fuge. Deafness is something else. Such a dark funnel, my father! I see your voice Black and leafy, as in my childhood, A yew hedge of orders, Gothic and barbarous, pure German. Dead men cry from it. I am guilty of nothing. The yew my Christ, then. Is it not as tortured? And you, during the Great War In the California delicatessen Lopping the suasages! They color my sleep, Red, mottled, like cut necks. There was a silence! Great silence of another order. I was seven, I knew nothing. The world occurred. You had one leg, and a Prussian mind. Now similar coulds Are spreading their vacuous sheets. Do you say nothing? I am lame in the memory. I remember a blue eye, A briefcase of tangerines. This was a man, then! Death opened, like a black tree, blackly. I survive the while, Arranging my morning. These are my fingers, this my baby. The clouds are a marriage dress, of that pallor. 2 April 1962 —Sylvia Plath --

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