The Colossus - A poem by Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath - The Colossus

I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and bawdy cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.

Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.

Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull-plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.

A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered

In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,

Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.

Added: on November 27th, 2008 at 3:33 PM | Viewed: 20088 times | Comments and analysis of The Colossus by Sylvia Plath Comments (18)

The Colossus - Comments and Information
Poet: Sylvia Plath (Sylvia Plath Art) Poem: The Colossus Volume: The Collected Poems Year: Published/Written in 1959 Poem of the Day: Jun 12 2006 Comment 18 of 18, added on January 15th, 2009 at 7:15 AM. I agree that daddy is very much like a sequal to this poem as many parallels can be drawn between the two ie. she mentions in both being broken and then stuck back together with glue except in daddy she is the one who has become broken. Also the notion of being pieced and glued gives a sense that it isn't completely fixed and implies a sense of permanent damage. Becky from United Kingdom Comment 17 of 18, added on November 28th, 2008 at 2:44 AM. Wow, this is an amazing poem and think it's endearing that she possibly made a mistake by putting Roman where it seems she must really have meant Greek. Unlike a previous reader, I am most struck by the last two lines - wow, I want to remember those always - that no longer listening for the keel scraping. You know you have really overcome someone when you can say that is true. Perhaps most would say they no longer are listening for the phone to ring or checking their mailbox. Perhaps it's overanalyzing someone from the past - at any rate, you've given up trying to figure out the relationship or concerning yourself with its "arrival". ea Comment 16 of 18, added on November 27th, 2008 at 3:33 PM. I love the poem of The Colossus, especially the first two lines of the first stanza because it is very sad. She tries to put the broken parts of the dead to bring it into life but it is effortless. She wishes to bring the dead person, or a very dear person who disappeared and impossible to come back to life and without him her life is impossible, can be a lost lover, a masculine figure. Drakhshan from Finland More Comments >> Are you looking for more information on this poem? Perhaps you are trying to analyze it? The poem, The Colossus, has received 18 comments. Click here to read them, and perhaps post a comment of your own. Of course you can also always discuss poems by Sylvia Plath with others on the American Poems poetry forum!

Poem Info
Poet: Sylvia Plath Poem: The Colossus Volume: The Collected Poems Year: Published/Written in 1959 Last read: Dec 8 2009, 12:06AM Poem of the Day: Jun 12 2006 Viewed 20088 times. Added on November 27th, 2008 at 3:33 PM.

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