Nicholas Hughes

Nicholas Hughes

Nicholas Hughes
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“Damocles has been
advising his sister”
—Frieda Hughes,
“Damocles,” Waxworks
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Nicholas has been—
Advising Frieda against
Having any children:

“Look what happened—
To Iphigenia sacrificed by
Agamemnon her own father”
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“I’m like the Watchman—
On top of the house lying
Restless like a dog"

"Waiting for the return—
Of Agamemnon just as
Clytemnestra waited too”
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“A huge ox has stepped—
On my tongue and I can’t
Speak of our Family Secret”

From the silence of Nicholas—
The Sylvia Plath chorus begins
Its great Parados trilogy
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The past hopes and fears—
That constitute the present
This Narrative we live thru now…

This Agon secret in the closet—
This agony that Clytemnestra and
Agamemnon lived thru back then
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It’s all been heavily debated—
How many “Monsters” on the head
Of a pin, how many “Arraignments”?

No wonder Agamemnon hesitated—
To cross the purple tapestry entrance
And enter the Ariel oikos of his home
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The Trojan War to take Poetry—
The Trojan Horse to enter the City
The Poet Laureateship of the Queen

The Order of Merit awarded—
The Hawk in the Rain and the Crow
The Thought Fox, the Pike and Jaguar
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All of this Mytholmroyd mythology—
Championed by Miss Eliot and the
Whole Faber & Faber Pantheon

All this was the gift of Ariel—
The thing that Sylvia Plath threatened
To take away from him with the Oven