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[amphetamine5000.livejournal.com]

Sylvia's Death, By Anne Sexton

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!

Comments

[pyralid.livejournal.com]

I remember reading this long ago. Thank you for letting me get reacquainted with it. Sexton makes me love her for her sorrow. Rare it is to have a poet-friend, and to lose such a one as that must have been...well, she says it better. There is the very essence of loss in her words.

[iamkatia.livejournal.com]

how wrenching...

[amphetamine5000.livejournal.com]

In my opinion, the most wrenching line is

Thief --
how did you crawl into,

crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,

I think that this line is just very very moving.

[iamkatia.livejournal.com]

yes, very very moving.

I can't imagine wanting death so dearly...

sad.

[i-am-scowling.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Sexton and Plath. Lovely, tormented. Thanks for posting this.

[amphetamine5000.livejournal.com]

No problem! I read it for a class and thought that it was a great poem.

[dinnerateight.livejournal.com]

amazing to think about, that they knew each other and had such impact on each other's art. great poem