Sunday Plath; Another of the Last

Child

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate --
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

Sylvia Plath



This poem dates from January 28th 1963. She wrote other poems that same day: Totem, The Munich Mannequins, and she finished the wonderful Sheep in Fog which she'd started in December.

That's an astonishing creative burst for just a single day's work.

She died the following 11th of February. Her suicide did not become known publically until 1965, when reviewer George Steiner brought it to the world's attention in an article he wrote about Plath's Ariel collection.