Daddy - Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do

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

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

It stuck in a barb wire snare

Ich, ich, ich, ich

I could hardly speak

I thought every German was you

And the language obscene

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen

I began to talk like a Jew

I think I may well be a Jew

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna

Are not very pure or true

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew

I have always been scared of you

With your Luftwaffe, your

gobbledygoo

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue

Panzer-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

Brute 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

Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two

I was ten when they buried you

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you

I thought even the bones would do

But they pulled me out of the sack

And they stuck me together with glue

And then I knew what to do

I made a model of you

A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw

And I said I do, I do

So daddy, I’m finally through

The black telephone’s off at the root

The voices just can’t worm through

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two--

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year

Seven years, if you want to know

Daddy, you can lie back now

There’s a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you

They are dancing and stamping on you

They always knew it was you

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through