Ted Hughes
As I am laid low by a violent cough I’ve been reading The Newstatesman and in particular a lately discovered poem about Sylvia Plath’s last night.He seems to have been naive in thinking an isolated American woman with no family here could be left alone with two tiny children while he was of with various other women.Oh,was a night of sexual frolics,with someone you
didn’t even love,in a place with no telephone,
Was it worth thirty plus years of harrowing
Grief and guilt.Did you need the excitement?
Writing,too demanding.Real love was certainly
A demand but one you’d think would be
A useful mine for poetry.Sylvia’s love
Too much?And what you thought would be
A few seemingly trivial acts,could have
such consequences.
But isn’t that always so ?
I don’t think Pontius Pilate knew
His name would go down in history
As the Judge of God himself,
Washing his hands like an obsessive,thinking
A ritual would heal him of his guilt
