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
