Tulips

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.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year~old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

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.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

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.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
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.

 

The third stanza of the poem Tulips articulates Plath’s own emotional hardships. In the first lines of the stanza, Plath compares herself to a pebble being run over by water. This represents a feeling of neglect, which comes from Plath. She also talks about being numb and sleeping – as if she is passive to the events around her because everyone seems to pass over her. She concludes the stanza by saying, “My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;/Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks” (lines 19-20). Here, Plath contrasts how unhappy and alone she is with the people in her family photo, who are together and cheerful. She also talks about how their smiles catch onto her skin like hooks, implying how painfully it must be for her to look at her husband and child be so content while she is experiencing this emotional trauma. In this way the stanza shows how removed Plath is from her family and the world, thus contributing further to her emotional problems.
In the sixth stanza, Plath uses the vibrant colors of the tulips to further communicate her message of emotional distance and depression. She describes the tulips as being, “too red in the first place” (line 34) and well as the pain they cause her. Tulips are commonly a symbol of love, and the extreme red color represents the passions associated with this love. However, the passion is too much for Plath because the Tulips are not a symbol of her love, but the love that is all around her. This love is intoxicating to her because it is a constant reminder of how happy she could be, but she is not. This is evident from the white snow she describes around the growing tulips. This color represents the innocence of the tulips. They do not know that are causing pain to Plath because often times people do not realize that they are being insensitive towards a depressed person. In this way, the dynamic colors of the sixth stanza highlight the passion that is missing from Plath’s life.
The seventh stanza of the poem shows how Plath’s negative self image combined with the surrounding passion, represented by the tulips, literally cause her life to come to an end. In this stanza she describes her self as being “flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow” (line 43). Here, Plath describes the lack of depth to her life. She sees herself as flat and a shadow – something that no one really cares about. She also describes herself in an inhumane way, saying that she does not have a face. Both of these contribute to Plath’s low self esteem. The Plath ends the stanza by declaring, “The vivid tulips eat my oxygen” (line 46). Here, the intense passion of the tulips is becoming too much for Plath, so she finds herself unable to breathe. Her negative self image and the surrounding tulips now becomes all consuming. To someone who is not depressed these tulips reappearing at the start of spring would be a happy sight, but to Plath, they are a constant reminder of her emotional pain that literally prevent her from living her life.