Best Famous Wit's End Poems

Sylvias Death

 for Sylvia Plath
O Sylvia, Sylvia, 
with a dead box of stones and spoons, 
with two children, two meteors 
wandering loose in a tiny playroom, 
with your mouth into the sheet, 
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer, 
(Sylvia, Sylvia 
where did you go 
after you wrote me 
from Devonshire 
about rasing potatoes 
and keeping bees?) 
what did you stand by, 
just how did you lie down into? 
Thief -- 
how did you crawl into, 
crawl down alone 
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long, 
the death we said we both outgrew, 
the one we wore on our skinny breasts, 
the one we talked of so often each time 
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston, 
the death that talked of analysts and cures, 
the death that talked like brides with plots, 
the death we drank to, 
the motives and the quiet deed? 
(In Boston 
the dying 
ride in cabs, 
yes death again, 
that ride home 
with our boy.) 
O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer 
who beat on our eyes with an old story, 
how we wanted to let him come 
like a sadist or a New York fairy 
to do his job, 
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib, 
and since that time he waited 
under our heart, our cupboard, 
and I see now that we store him up 
year after year, old suicides 
and I know at the news of your death 
a terrible taste for it, like salt, 
(And me, 
me too. 
And now, Sylvia, 
you again 
with death again, 
that ride home 
with our boy.) 
And I say only 
with my arms stretched out into that stone place, 
what is your death 
but an old belonging, 
a mole that fell out 
of one of your poems? 
(O friend, 
while the moon's bad, 
and the king's gone, 
and the queen's at her wit's end 
the bar fly ought to sing!) 
O tiny mother, 
you too! 
O funny duchess! 
O blonde thing!