Mad Girl's Love Song
By Sylvia Plath
"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"
I can't forget the ending of Sylvia (the film), where a flourishing tree appears on the screen, joggling its beautiful tender branches, verdant leaves, and ripe red fruits as the gentle breeze passes it. At the ending, I saw vigor and the steady, calm, introvertive love of life under Sylvia Plath's endless strong passion for love throughout her life. My mind has been obsessing over the film Sylvia since I watched it this time last year due to Gwyneth Paltrow's excellent acting, and the beautiful mind and the tragic life of Sylvia Plath, one of my favourite poets. Everytime I read her poems, the scenes of the film would show up from an unknown part of my mind, like a visitor coming from somewhere far far away in geography, but so close in my heart.
When I found Sylvia Plath Collected Poems at the libarary, I saw, and felt the existence of that tree again. I felt as if I was sitting underneath its crown, meditating. Few seconds in my life are more touching than that moment. I turned over the first page, witnessing, and feeling, this passionate love that originated in a dance at the dreaming spires of Oxford. I saw them sitting on the wooden boat randomly floating on the Avon River where they read poems to the cows eating grass on the bank, in a brick-red chapel of Smith College where she ate battercake she made together with him, in her small apartment in England where she ended her life on a gloomy London morning...After a journey across the ocean, I finally found a real Sylvia, yet I could only feel her by touching her poems gently with my fingers, and reading loudly with my full heart. This time, the feeling is more real, more vivid, closer and stronger. At this moment I am enjoying the realization of a dream.
