Sylvia Plath — On the Decline of Oracles

My father kept a vaulted conch By two bronze bookends of ships in sail, And I listened its cold teeth seethed With voices of that ambiguous sea Old Böcklin missed, who held a shell To hear the sea he could not hear. What the seashell spoke to his inner ear He knew, but no peasants know. My father died, and when he died He willed his books and shell away. The books burned up, sea took the shell, But I, I kept the voices he Set in my ear, and in my eye The sight of those blue, unseen waves For which the ghost Böcklin grieves. The peasants feast and multiply And never need what I see. In the Temple of Broken Stones, above A worn curtain, rears the white head Of a god or madman. Nobody knows Which, or dares to ask. From him I have Tomorrow's gossip and doldrums. So much Is vision good for: like a persistant stitch In the side , it nags, is tedious.