I see you
clutching poems to your chest
still and quiet as a monk praying
Alone now-
cold dawn creeping into your flat
footsteps disappearing down dead end streets
the dust accumulating,old scabs and sores,
words of worry building
cubist music of the mind.

Children sleeping, you weeping
the sink leaking, wintering of days-
wearing down hard stone of resolution.
‘I am ugly’ she said
‘Scarred from madness and vanity’s decay.’
had she loved madly and not well?
had not dotted her i’s or crossed her t’s
diverted her path from sane rational discourse
Alone
dogs of death snapping at her heels.

A large woman’ described by one ‘dyed her hair blonde
must be insane’
married Ted Hughes, her Heathcliffe
‘ a banger ‘she said, ‘the mind of a genius’
and her with her shards of poetic mind
Alone
sorting out her poems,looking for a sign.

‘ I am going to die’ she cries out
hammering on her neighbours door,
‘ And who will wash and see that my children are fed’
The old man downstairs moves quietly away
feeling the first shudder of grief.
She hesitates, feeling betrayed, trapped in her own play-
retreats to her kitchen, despairs of her suffering,
turns the lock quietly, opens the oven door-

And the whole world walks in forever more.