Reading Plath

Outside in the forest –
the night crickets of South Africa chime precisely,
like small xylophones,
into the luxurious night –
while fluting tree-frogs
colour the air deep black, and
night pools richly around the house.

Indoors, reclining,
but not at ease
she stills her mind –
its jarring images competing
like mismatched jigsaw puzzle pieces
clamouring to be made part of a whole –
feel the Faber & Faber book,
anchor-steady in her hand.

Bravely, the light from the bedside lamp
reaches between the stiff formality of green silk curtains –
grasps darkness,
making of it,
something new.

A poem, from far away,
written in England, in another century,
flares and
ricochets across the rough page into consciousness,
like a bullet, finding its mark.
1956. ‘Firesong.’
‘brave love, dream
not of staunching such strict flame, but come,
lean to my wound; burn on, burn on’.

Plath’s rooks caw –
unappeased,
as she rages at the ragged American ocean
her grandmother left behind,
‘what is it
survives, grieves
so, over this battered, obstinate spit
of gravel? The waves’
spewed relics clicker masses in the wind,
grey waves the stub-necked eiders ride.
a labour of love, and that labour lost.
steadily the sea
eats at Point Shirley’.

The words are powerful
enough
to reach beyond death.

No ‘blank untenanted air’
here,
from the mute November Graveyard
where Plath lies buried.

Rather – the air
she bequeathed
is as fecund as that of the night-time jungle in Africa –
sixty years on –
pulsing beyond the patient window.

Peopled with a wealth of words,
Coming, going,
Like spirits,
Like angels.

Like dreams
that elude
the woman who read Plath
lying there wide-eyed in the dark

with a mind
on fire.

21.8


References

‘Firesong’, ‘Point Shirley’, ‘November Graveyard’ are all from Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems (Faber & Faber, London, 1990)