Nick And The Candlestick - A poem by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath - Nick And The Candlestick

I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb

Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish----
Christ! They are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs----

The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric
Atoms that cripple drip
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.

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Added: Feb 20 2003 | Viewed: 16944 times |

Comments (4)

Nick And The Candlestick - Comments and Information
Poet: Sylvia Plath Poem: Nick And The Candlestick Volume: The Collected Poems Year: Published/Written in 1962 Poem of the Day: Oct 1 2004 Comment 4 of 4, added on June 6th, 2013 at 1:22 PM. uKwzaZzIPAtwdhjSWl Really enjoyed this blog post.Much thanks again. Awesome. SMM from Iran Comment 3 of 4, added on December 5th, 2012 at 8:38 PM. Amazing Poet! Nicholas was her savior, her Baby Christ Child in the barn, she had such high hopes that his essence would pull her from the gloom and set her back on track, into the light. Leo Locke from United States Comment 2 of 4, added on April 1st, 2009 at 1:37 PM. I always believed this poem was written as a goodbye letter to her infant son. Plath speaks as mother, murderess, survivor; she is amazed and envious of her son and the life she set forward when giving birth to him. When she wrote this she was already a moving emotional train wreck. Maybe she hoped her love for her children would be enough to save her from her self inflicted fate. It wasn't. Denise from United Kingdom More Comments >> Are you looking for more information on this poem? Perhaps you are trying to analyze it? The poem, Nick And The Candlestick, has received 4 comments. Click here to read them, and perhaps post a comment of your own.

Poem Info
Poet: Sylvia Plath Poem: Nick And The Candlestick Volume: The Collected Poems Year: Published/Written in 1962 Last read: 2013-06-19 04:30:21 Poem of the Day: Oct 1 2004 Viewed 16944 times. Added Feb 20 2003.

Plath Info
Biography More Poems (121 poems) Sylvia Plath books