The Severed Heads
__________________
“Fired in sanguine
clay, the model head
Fit nowhere”
—Sylvia Plath
“The Lady and the
Earthenware Head”
The Collected Poems
________________________
A fishing trip brought to life—
A nightmare dream that haunted
Ted Hughes for years & years
A severed head was pursuing him—
After Hughes was enjoying fishing with
His brother Gerald in the Yorkshire moors
____________________
Encountering a creature called Yetti—
The elder brother was devoured and all
That was left of him was a severed head
The younger brother tried to run away—
But the head chased him, haunting him
The rest of his life wherever he went
_____________________
Hughes remembered the dream—
Down to the last detail: the valley, moors,
Exactly like Sylvia Plath’s graveside
Hughes stopped writing poetry then—
Because everything he wrote prophesied
What would happen in the next few years
___________________
Assia Wevill was next, somebody gassed—
Them to death, talk about coincidences,
But Hughes just shook his head
The severed heads kept coming back—
Jacqueline Rose, Jillian Becker, Trevor Thomas,
Elizabeth Sigmund and Clarissa Roche
____________________
Ted Hughes felt like a caught octopus—
Squirting clouds of murky ink distracting all
Those critics from some “terrible revelation”
Aurelia Plath called it that & joined all the—
Severed heads growing even more pushy,
Fearful, overwrought voices of the dead
____________________________
Robin Morgan’s “Arraignment” poem—
The title work in her book "Monster" faded
Now like old graffiti on bathroom walls
Nobody talks about Plath’s “murder-suicide”—
Not anymore or Ted Hughes' battery and
Womanizing since the Queen’s Order of Merit
_____________________
The sophisticated postmodern poets—
Like Carol Ann Duffy first Woman British Poet
Laureate and US Kay Ryan and Philip Levine
None of these minstrels and versifiers—
Speak like Orphee severed heads for the
Plagued & haunted poor Sylvia Plath
_____________________
No more “Arraignment Harpies”—
Are threatening mass unravelings of
The sullen Plath Archives anymore
__________________
“Fired in sanguine
clay, the model head
Fit nowhere”
—Sylvia Plath
“The Lady and the
Earthenware Head”
The Collected Poems
________________________
A fishing trip brought to life—
A nightmare dream that haunted
Ted Hughes for years & years
A severed head was pursuing him—
After Hughes was enjoying fishing with
His brother Gerald in the Yorkshire moors
____________________
Encountering a creature called Yetti—
The elder brother was devoured and all
That was left of him was a severed head
The younger brother tried to run away—
But the head chased him, haunting him
The rest of his life wherever he went
_____________________
Hughes remembered the dream—
Down to the last detail: the valley, moors,
Exactly like Sylvia Plath’s graveside
Hughes stopped writing poetry then—
Because everything he wrote prophesied
What would happen in the next few years
___________________
Assia Wevill was next, somebody gassed—
Them to death, talk about coincidences,
But Hughes just shook his head
The severed heads kept coming back—
Jacqueline Rose, Jillian Becker, Trevor Thomas,
Elizabeth Sigmund and Clarissa Roche
____________________
Ted Hughes felt like a caught octopus—
Squirting clouds of murky ink distracting all
Those critics from some “terrible revelation”
Aurelia Plath called it that & joined all the—
Severed heads growing even more pushy,
Fearful, overwrought voices of the dead
____________________________
Robin Morgan’s “Arraignment” poem—
The title work in her book "Monster" faded
Now like old graffiti on bathroom walls
Nobody talks about Plath’s “murder-suicide”—
Not anymore or Ted Hughes' battery and
Womanizing since the Queen’s Order of Merit
_____________________
The sophisticated postmodern poets—
Like Carol Ann Duffy first Woman British Poet
Laureate and US Kay Ryan and Philip Levine
None of these minstrels and versifiers—
Speak like Orphee severed heads for the
Plagued & haunted poor Sylvia Plath
_____________________
No more “Arraignment Harpies”—
Are threatening mass unravelings of
The sullen Plath Archives anymore
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