Little stalk without wrinkle

Today I'm going to Melbourne to meet my small nephew, now three weeks old. I probably won't find Sylvia Plath's poem “Child” in a Hallmark card, but it has a truth and troubled joy about it that I find moving. It ends uneasily, but it has said something astonishing about childhood.

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate ---
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.