Poetry at the Post-Budapest: Fever 103°, A Heat Wave Is Coming!

Fever 103°
BY SYLVIA PLATH

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel,
Such yellow sullen

I bought a new yellow scarf…

“A heat wave is coming to Budapest!” That is what the sales clerk told me.

… & then a white blouse,cool.

“It will be oppressive,” she said. “Close to 40. The heat will just sit in the air.”

…They will not rise,
But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,

Oppression,
border shifts
regime changes.

I’ve taken
to touching
buildings,
to feel
the shifts
of salt, of grit,
the cleansings.

In the end, whenever or wherever we lived or live, we must find the “I.”

The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I