Words
Words - meaning Summary
Language as Unmoored Echo
Plath’s poem tracks images of cutting, sap, and echoes to suggest how action and language lose vitality over time. Natural images—wood struck by an axe, sap like tears, a skull eaten by greens—convey decay and the persistence of echoes. Words become dry and riderless, detached from their original force, while distant, fixed stars imply an indifferent order governing life. The poem meditates on loss, the erosion of meaning, and cosmic continuity.
Read Complete AnalysesAxes After whose stroke the wood rings, And the echoes! Echoes traveling Off from the center like horses. The sap Wells like tears, like the Water striving To re-establish its mirror Over the rock That drops and turns, A white skull, Eaten by weedy greens. Years later I Encounter them on the road- Words dry and riderless, The indefatigable hoof-taps. While From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars Govern a life.
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