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    Daddy by Sylvia Plath

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    jdsds

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Daddy by Sylvia Plath

    Uploaded by

    jdsds
    173 views4 pages

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    © © All Rights Reserved

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    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    173 views4 pages

    Daddy by Sylvia Plath

    Uploaded by

    jdsds

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 4

    Daddy by Sylvia Plath | Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.

    org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2

    Daddy
    BY SYLV IA PL AT H

    You do not do, you do not do


    Any more, black shoe
    In which I have lived like a foot
    For thirty years, poor and white,
    Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

    Daddy, I have had to kill you.


    You died before I had time——
    Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
    Ghastly statue with one gray toe
    Big as a Frisco seal

    And a head in the freakish Atlantic


    Where it pours bean green over blue
    In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
    I used to pray to recover you.
    Ach, du.

    In the German tongue, in the Polish town


    Scraped flat by the roller
    Of wars, wars, wars.
    But the name of the town is common.
    My Polack friend

    Says there are a dozen or two.


    So I never could tell where you
    Put your foot, your root,
    I never could talk to you.
    The tongue stuck in my jaw.

    1 of 4 11/5/19, 7:54 AM
    Daddy by Sylvia Plath | Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2

    It stuck in a barb wire snare.


    Ich, ich, ich, ich,
    I could hardly speak.
    I thought every German was you.
    And the language obscene

    An engine, an engine
    Chuffing me off like a Jew.
    A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
    I began to talk like a Jew.
    I think I may well be a Jew.

    The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna


    Are not very pure or true.
    With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
    And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
    I may be a bit of a Jew.

    I have always been scared of you,


    With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
    And your neat mustache
    And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
    Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

    Not God but a swastika


    So black no sky could squeak through.
    Every woman adores a Fascist,
    The boot in the face, the brute
    Brute heart of a brute like you.

    You stand at the blackboard, daddy,


    In the picture I have of you,
    A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
    But no less a devil for that, no not
    Any less the black man who

    Bit my pretty red heart in two.

    2 of 4 11/5/19, 7:54 AM
    Daddy by Sylvia Plath | Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2

    I was ten when they buried you.


    At twenty I tried to die
    And get back, back, back to you.
    I thought even the bones would do.

    But they pulled me out of the sack,


    And they stuck me together with glue.
    And then I knew what to do.
    I made a model of you,
    A man in black with a Meinkampf look

    And a love of the rack and the screw.


    And I said I do, I do.
    So daddy, I’m finally through.
    The black telephone’s off at the root,
    The voices just can’t worm through.

    If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——


    The vampire who said he was you
    And drank my blood for a year,
    Seven years, if you want to know.
    Daddy, you can lie back now.

    There’s a stake in your fat black heart


    And the villagers never liked you.
    They are dancing and stamping on you.
    They always knew it was you.
    Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

    Sylvia Plath, “Daddy” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 1960, 1965, 1971, 1981 by the Estate of Sylvia
    Plath. Editorial matter copyright © 1981 by Ted Hughes. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

    Source: Collected Poems (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, 1992)

    3 of 4 11/5/19, 7:54 AM
    Daddy by Sylvia Plath | Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2

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    4 of 4 11/5/19, 7:54 AM

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