Dream Song 172: Your face broods by John Berryman
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.
|