Morning Song by Sylvia Plath

Morning Song

by Sylvia Plath

Love set you going like a fat gold watch.

The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry   

Took its place among the elements.

Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

I’m no more your mother

Than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow

Effacement at the wind’s hand.

All night your moth-breath

Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:

A far sea moves in my ear.

One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s. The window square

Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try

Your handful of notes;

The clear vowels rise like balloons.

If ever you are looking for an overload of metaphors and images, you should always look for Plath! This poem, written for Plath's firstborn, her daughter Frieda. The baby, the mother, and even the setting are described in so many ways, including various animals, flowers, and statues in museums. The one constant throughout is Plath's use of sound throughout: cry, voices echo, moth-breath (how amazing is this?), a far sea, another cry, notes, and clear vowels. Even nouns and actions suggest sounds: a watch, the nurse slapping the newborn's feet, the wind, stumbling, a cat's mouth, and swallowing.

Babies are, of course, noisy. They have no other way to communicate. Plath deftly writes a loud poem without ever using words like loud or noise, and the sounds are just a part of the poem, as a baby's sounds become a regular part of parents' lives ("your bald cry/Took its place among the elements.).

Along with sound is movement and stillness. Drafty air exists in a museum where adults stand around. The baby's breath flickering on roses. And in that wonderful last line: The clear vowels rise like balloons.

Although there is nothing I do not love in this poem, my favorite image is the following:

I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

Here we have movement and the suggestion of sound; a term that alludes to being filled with mother's milk, heavier than normal, and not at all graceful, bolstering the clumsiness of stumbling; and the odd, old-fashioned flowery nightgown being worn in 1961. It provides a very clear image of a new mother being roused from sleep by her crying baby. And "cow-heavy" is as fantastic as "moth-breath." Both are very Plath.

Learn more about Plath here.

Here.

And by reading her poetry and The Bell Jar.

If you want to get all the nitty-gritty, and there is a lot, read Heather Clark's Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. You can buy that book here.