Poem for a Birthday 1.Who The month of flowering's finished. The fruit's in, Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth. October's the month for storage. This shed's fusty as a mummy's stomach: Old tools, handles and rusty tusks. I am at home here among the dead heads. Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won't notice. My heart is a stopped geranuim. If only the wind would leave my lungs alone. Dogbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down. They rattle like hydrangea bushes. Moldering heads console me, Nailed to the rafters yesterday: Inmates who don't hybernate. Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze, A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted, Their veins white as porkfat. O the beauty of usage! The orange pumpkins have no eyes. These halls are full of women who think they are birds. This is a dull school. I am a root, a stone, an owl-pellet, Without dreams of any sort. Mother, you are the one mouth I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways. I said: I must remember this, being small. There were such enormous flowers, Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely. The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry. Now they light me up like an electric bulb. For weeks I can remember nothing at all. 2.Dark House This is a dark house, very big. I made it myself, Cell by cell from a quiet corner, Chewing at the gray paper, Oozing the glue drops, Whistling, wiggling my ears, Thinking of something else. It has so many cellars, Such eelish delvings! I am round as an owl, I see by my own light. Any day I may litter puppies Or mother a horse. My belly moves. I must make more maps. These marrowy tunnels! Moley-handed, I eat my way. All-mouth licks up the bushes And the pots of meat. He lives in an old well, A stony hole. He's to blame. He's a fat sort. Pebble smells, turnipy chambers. Small nostrils are breathing. Little humble loves! Footlings, boneless as noses, It is warm and tolerable In the bowel of the root. Here's a cuddly mother. 3.Maenad Once I was ordinary: Sat by my father's bean tree Eating the fingers of wisdom. The birds made milk. When it thundered I hid under a flat stone. The mother of mouths didn't love me. The old man shrank to a doll. O I am too big to go backward: Birdmilk is feathers, The bean leaves are dumb as hands. This month is fit for little. The dead ripen in the grapeleaves. A red tongue is among us. Mother, keep out of my barnyard, I am becoming another. Dog-head, devourer: Feed me the berries of dark. The lids won't shut. Time Unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun Its endless glitter. I must swallow it all. Lady, who are these others in the moon's vat— Sleepdrunk, their limbs at odds? In this light the blood is black. Tell me my name. 4.The Beast He was bullman earlier, King of the dish, my lucky animal. Breathing was easy in his airy holding. The sun sat in his armpit. Nothing went moldy. The little invisibles Waited on him hand and foot. The blue sisters send me to another school. Monkey lived under the dunce cap. He kept blowing me kisses. I hardly knew him. He won't be got rid of: Mumblepaws, teary and sorry, Fido Littlesoul, the bowel's familiar. A dustbin's enough for him. The dark's his bone. Call him any name, he'll come to it. Mud-sump, happy sty-face. I've married a cupboard of rubbish. I bed in a fish puddle. Down here the sky is always falling. Hogwallow's at the window. The star bugs won't save me this month. I housekeep in Time's gut-end Among emmets and mollusks, Duchess of Nothing, Hairtusk's bride. 5.Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond Now coldness comes sifting down, layer after layer, To our bower at the lily root. Overhead the old umbrellas of summer Wither like pithless hands. There is little shelter. Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blank Dominion. The stars are no nearer. Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drink The liquor of indolence, and all things sink Into a soft caul of forgetfulness. The fugitive colors die. Caddis worms drowse in their silk cases, The lamp-headed nymphs are nodding to sleep like statues. Puppets, loosed from the strings of the puppet master, Wear masks of horn to bed. This is not death, it is something safer. The wingy myths won't tug at us any more: The molts are tongueless that sang from above the water Of golgotha at the tip of a reed, And how a god flimsy as a baby's finger Shall unhusk himself and steer into the air. 6.Witch Burning In the marketplace they are piling the dry sticks. A thicket of shadows is a poor coat. I inhabit The wax image of myself, a doll's body. Sickness begins here: I am a dartboard for witches. Only the devil can eat the devil out. In the month of red leaves I climb to a bed of fire. It is easy to blame the dark: the mouth of a door, The cellar's belly. They've blown my sparkler out. A black-sharded lady keeps me in a parrot cage. What large eyes the dead have! I am intimate with a hairy spirit. Smoke wheels from the beak of this empty jar. If I am a little one, I can do no harm. If I don't move about, I'll knock nothing over. So I said, Sitting under a potlid, tiny and inert as a rice grain. They are turning the burners up, ring after ring. We are full of starch, my small white fellows. We grow. It hurts at first. The red tongues will teach the truth. Mother of beetles, only unclench your hand: I'll fly throught the candle's mouth like a singeless moth. Give me back my shape. I am ready to construe the days I coupled with dust in the shadow of a stone. My ankles brighten. Brightness ascends my thighs. I am lost, I am lost, in the robes of all this light. 7.The Stones This is the city where men are mended. I lie on a great anvil. The flat blue sky-circle Flew off like the hat of a doll When I fell out of the light. I entered The stomach of indifference, the wordless cupboard. The mother of pestles diminished me. I became a still pebble. The stones of the belly were peaceable, The head-stone quiet, jostled by nothing. Only the mouth-hole piped out, Importunate cricket In a quarry of silences. The people of the city hearded it. They hunted the stones, taciturn and separate, The mouth-hole crying their locations. Drunk as a foetus I suck at the paps of darkness. The foot tubes embrace me. Sponges kiss my lichens away. The jewelmaster drives his chisel to pry Open one stone eye. This is the after-hell: I see the light. A wind unstoppers the chamber Of the ear, old worrier. Water mollifies the flint lip, And daylight lays its sameness on the wall. The grafters were cheerful, Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers. A current agitates the wires Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures. A workman walks by carrying a pink torso. The storerooms are full of hearts. This is the city of spare parts. My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber. Here they can doctor heads, or any limb. On Fridays the little children come To trade their hooks for hands. Dead men leave eyes for others. Love is the uniform of my bald nurse. Love is the bone and sinew of my curse. The vase, reconstructed, houses The elusive rose. Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows. My mendings itch. There is nothing to do. I shall be good as new. 4 November 1959 —Sylvia Plath --

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