Gold Mouths Cry

by Sylvia Plath

Gold mouths cry with the green young certainty of the bronze boy remembering a thousand autumns and how a hundred thousand leaves came sliding down his shoulder blades persuaded by his bronze heroic reason. We ignore the coming doom of gold and we are glad in this bright metal season. Even the dead laugh among the goldenrod. The bronze boy stands kneedeep in centuries, and never grieves, remembering a thousand autumns, with sunlight of a thousand years upon his lips and his eyes gone blind with leaves.