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May 21st, 2013 - we have 234 poets, 8,025 poems and 56,671 comments.
Sylvia Plath - Mystic

The air is a mill of hooks --
Questions without answer,
Glittering and drunk as flies
Whose kiss stings unbearably
In the fetid wombs of black air under pines in summer.

I remember
The dead smell of sun on wood cabins,
The stiffness of sails, the long salt winding sheets.
Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?
Once one has been seized up

Without a part left over,
Not a toe, not a finger, and used,
Used utterly, in the sun's conflagration, the stains
That lengthen from ancient cathedrals
What is the remedy?

The pill of the Communion tablet,
The walking beside still water? Memory?
Or picking up the bright pieces
Of Christ in the faces of rodents,
The tame flower-nibblers, the ones

Whose hopes are so low they are comfortable --
The humpback in his small, washed cottage
Under the spokes of the clematis.
Is there no great love, only tenderness?
Does the sea

Remember the walker upon it?
Meaning leaks from the molecules.
The chimneys of the city breathe, the window sweats,
The children leap in their cots.
The sun blooms, it is a geranium.

The heart has not stopped.

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Added: Feb 20 2003 | Viewed: 13147 times | Comments and analysis of Mystic by Sylvia Plath Comments (5)

Mystic - Comments and Information

Poet: Sylvia Plath
Poem: Mystic
Volume: The Collected Poems
Year: Published/Written in 1963

Comment 5 of 5, added on April 26th, 2013 at 4:48 AM.
Its always necessary keep your teeth clean

A tooth (plural teeth) is a mignonne, calcified, whitish structure found in the jaws (or mouths) of various vertebrates and worn to defeat down food. Some animals, particularly carnivores, also partake of teeth for the purpose hunting or for defensive purposes. The roots of teeth are covered sooner than gums. Teeth are not made of bone, but fairly of multiple tissues of varying density and hardness.

The unrestricted make-up of teeth is alike resemble across the vertebrates, although there is sizeable variation in their show up and position. The teeth of mammals be struck by deep roots, and this design is also found in some fish, and in crocodilians. In most teleost fish, regardless how, the teeth are attached to the outer rise of the bone, while in lizards they are fastened to the inner side of the jaw by one side. In cartilaginous fish, such as sharks, the teeth are attached by perplexing ligaments to the hoops of cartilage that construct the jaw.





ManteetleRima from Finland
Comment 4 of 5, added on August 1st, 2012 at 2:18 PM.
Poetry

The vision of phantasmagoria from the limited finite of this body , and a vehement desire of getting lost into the ultimate reality ,-carry the key note of this poem .

Subrata Ray from India
Comment 3 of 5, added on October 19th, 2007 at 7:21 PM.

This is about getting on with your life. It begins with a kind of agony which Plath writes about a lot, here as the sensation of joy, or transcendence, of having "seen God", begins to fade. That kind of experience she talks about in the second verse, and seems to relate to the revelation of death ("the dead smell of wood cabins") which she depicts as a voyage ("stiffness of sails"). But what makes all this interesting, is that she never focuses on that moment of epiphany, only on the torment of its after-effects. There what she felt in full, other public takes for granted as dogma ("bright pieces of Christ in the faces of rodents"), carrying out rituals of whose meaning they are oblivious. She wonders whether she can join them one day by forgetting what she saw ("Meaing leaks from the molecules"), and once again grow accustomed to the mundane world to which she returned from her travels.

The conclusion is that no matter the torment of "Questions without answer", "the heart has not stopped". That is to say, the people that suffer are the ones with the vision of something better, because once they unavoidably lose sight of that, all that is left to do is keep breathing.

Cameron Morse from United States

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