1. You do not do, you do not do
2. Any more, black shoe
3. In which I have lived like a foot
4. For thirty years, poor and white,
5. Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
6. Daddy, I have had to kill you.
7. You died before I had time --
8. Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
9. Ghastly statue with one gray toe
10. Big as a Frisco seal
11. And a head in the freakish Atlantic
12. Where it pours bean green over blue
13. In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
14. I used to pray to recover you.
15. Ach, du.
16. In the German tongue, in the Polish town
17. Scraped flat by the roller
18. Of wars, wars, wars.
19. But the name of the town is common.
20. My Polack friend
21. Says there are a dozen or two.
22. So I never could tell where you
23. Put your foot, your root,
24. I never could talk to you.
25. The tongue stuck in my jaw.
26. It stuck in a barb wire snare.
27. Ich, ich, ich, ich,
28. I could hardly speak.
29. I thought every German was you.
30. And the language obscene
31. An engine, an engine,
32. Chuffing me off like a Jew.
33. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
34. I began to talk like a Jew.
35. I think I may well be a Jew.
36. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
37. Are not very pure or true.
38. With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
39. And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
40. I may be a bit of a Jew.
41. I have always been scared of you,
42. With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
43. And your neat mustache
44. And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
45. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You --
46. Not God but a swastika
47. So black no sky could squeak through.
48. Every woman adores a Fascist,
49. The boot in the face, the brute
50. Brute heart of a brute like you.
51. You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
52. In the picture I have of you,
53. A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
54. But no less a devil for that, no not
55. Any less the black man who
56. Bit my pretty red heart in two.
57. I was ten when they buried you.
58. At twenty I tried to die
59. And get back, back, back to you.
60. I thought even the bones would do.
61. But they pulled me out of the sack,
62. And they stuck me together with glue.
63. And then I knew what to do.
64. I made a model of you,
65. A man in black with a Meinkampf look
66. And a love of the rack and the screw.
67. And I said I do, I do.
68. So daddy, I'm finally through.
69. The black telephone's off at the root,
70. The voices just can't worm through.
71. If I've killed one man, I've killed two --
72. The vampire who said he was you
73. And drank my blood for a year,
74. Seven years, if you want to know.
75. Daddy, you can lie back now.
76. There's a stake in your fat black heart
77. And the villagers never liked you.
78. They are dancing and stamping on you.
79. They always knew it was you.
80. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.
Sylvia Plath
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