Business management

SYLVIA PLATH [1932–1963]

Daddy

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,

5Barely 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 grey toe

10Big 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.

15Ach, du.[1]

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.

20My 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.

25The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

Ich, ich, ich, ich,[2]

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.

30And the language obscene

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.a

I began to talk like a Jew.

35I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol,b the clear beer of Vienna

Are not very pure or true.

With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

40I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe,c your gobbledygoo.

And your neat moustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

45Panzerd-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

50Brute 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

55Any less the black man who