O
N
I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free---The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on finally: I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
L
*The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here. Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in. I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions. I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.
Y
Tulips
L
The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me. Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds. Before they came, the air was calm enough, Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss. Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
S
A
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals; They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat, And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me. The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea, And comes from a country far away as health.
U
Sylvia Plath
R
p
P
The tu lips
ALTO
Shawn Kirchner
Calmly, freely, with natural declamatory ebb and flow q = c. 60
E
SOPRANO
18 March 1961
are too ex - ci - ta - ble,
p
The tu lips pp
TENOR Oo
are too ex - ci - ta - ble...
long
it is win - ter here. Look how white ev'-ry - thing
is, how
Look how white ev'-ry - thing
*Stanza 1 (complete), stanza 5 (complete), stanza 6 (lines 1 and 4), stanza 8 (lines 1-3), stanza 9 (lines 2-7) Copyright © 2013 by Shawn Kirchner Publishing, with permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. and the Estate of Sylvia Plath. Licensed copies available through www.ShawnKirchner.com
is, how