Sylvia Plath

Spinster

Now this particular girl During a ceremonious april walk With her latest suitor Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck By the bird's irregular babel And the leaves' litter. By this tumult afflicted, she Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air, His gait stray uneven Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower; She judged petals in disarray, The whole season, sloven. How she longed for winter then!- Scrupulously austere in its order Of white and black Ice and rock; each sentiment within border, And heart's frosty discipline Exact as a snowflake. But here - a burgeoning Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits Into vulgar motley- A treason not to be borne; let idiots Reel giddy in bedlam spring; She withdrew neatly. And round her house she set Such a barricade of barb and check Against mutinous weather As no mere insurgent man could hope to break With curse, fist, threat Or love, either. A French translation of this poem with the title Celibataire can be found elsewhere on the classical poetry section of Allpoetry. http://allpoetry. com/poem/8498161-Célibataire_-by-Sylvia_Plath