Dream Song 172

Your face broods from my table, Suicide.

Your force came on like a torrent toward the end

of agony and wrath.

You were christened in the beginning Sylvia Plath

and changed that name for Mrs Hughes and bred

and went on round the bend

till the oven seemed the proper place for you.

I brood upon your face, the geography of grief,

hooded, till I allow

again your resignation from us now

though the screams of orphaned children fix me anew.

Your torment here was brief,

long falls your exit all repeatingly,

a poor exemplum, one more suicide,

to stack upon the others

till stricken Henry with his sisters & brothers

suddenly gone pauses to wonder why he

alone breasts the wronging tide.