Daddy

BY SYLVIA PLATH

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,  

Barely 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 gray toe  

Big 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.

Ach, du.

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.  

My 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.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

Read the entire poem on:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48999/daddy-56d22aafa45b2