dear Sylvia Plath one day I knew I would write
about you I collected you or at least I knew your type
figured you out at once in the photograph
lovely pin-up with the coy under-lip who (in case it were
wondered what you’d become in life) would wittily reply
I’ll be a poet and famous I don’t wish to be I will
be as if saying were already achieving as
if the given word could not
reconsider. mistake.
the everyday search for awe curtailed
by every other morning depression
alarm clock shaking up the sleep the badly
disguised pleasure of routine followed
by an appetiser served with the obsequious grace of wonder
woman home goddess clever spouse
and afterwards whole afternoons invoking in vain the spared
pennies of poetry
and then sudden cravings for sanguine violence
and then nothing paralysis.
oh the cosmic anguish the fine trumpery with which
you replaced the usual petty resentment
of literary fortunes damn it Sylvia
frankly the uselessness of probing the depths
of the promising young precociously
dead.
Impossible to retreat Et pourtant you’ll say
we always retreat only pursuing
the ones following us the precursors who
with poetical sententious hinting
from their high cerulean areopagus
shoot us down.
Ted
and Ted Ted Ted Ted Ted Ted Ted
the enigma which as rumour has it
perfected the art you would master
till one day you stopped rehearsing
Ted the man lover prodigal magnanimous
intellectual titan sentimental scavenger
of affection,
or the fatal attraction of similar animals
when the hunting noose is the disavowing look
of the likeness in the mirror,
helplessly striking unawares
with ferocious voracity the Lucidity
our luscious lady lazarus
of poetry stepping along the via dolorosa
Sylvia word-swinger paralytic
somersault,
may you depart in peace and rest eternally
for I shall hold the ground and raise my bow
powerful weapon that I hurl
this word-
-sling
of acknowledgement.