Female Author

Sylvia Plath

Female Author

All day she plays at chess with the bones of the world:
Favored (While suddenly the rains begin
Beyond the window) she lies on cushions curled
And nibbles an occasional bonbon of sin.

Prim, pink-breasted, feminine, she nurses
Chocolate fancies in rose-papered rooms
Where polished highboys whisper creaking curses
And hothouse roses shed immoral blooms.

The garnets on her fingers twinkle quick
And blood reflects across the manuscript;
She muses on the odor, sweet and sick,
Of festering gardenias in a crypt,

And lost in subtle metaphor, retreats
From gray child faces crying in the streets.

Aus: Sylvia Plath: The collected Poems. Edited by Ted Hughes. New York u.a.: HarperCollins, 2015, S. 301

Der Herausgeber dieser zuerst 1981 erschienenen Ausgabe, ihr Ehemann Ted Hughes, entschied sich dafür, dieses Gedicht in einem Anhang unter der Rubrik Juvenilia zu veröffentlichen. Bestimmt hatte er seine Gründe.