Letters Home/Sylvia Plath

She would be a meteor
a fabled Amazon of letters
         not for her the
half-life   the shrivelled ego
of the forgotten woman
who penned disappointment;
   she wrote this way to
encourage capricious fate
so in its dark unknowing way
it would know her for the
winner she willed herself to be.

She met a man with whom
she could meet her jealous Muse
with a voice like the
          thunder of God
knew without knowing
what dark forces moved in her;
that the huge, sad hole
she was destined to fall into
was merely removed in time.

       Letters to Mother
celebrated success after success
          and unbridled pride
the sure knowledge that no one
was as gifted    as feted as
joyously filled with life and
promise as herself     as her
dear, lovely Ted with the
voice like the thunder of God.

Joy brimmed her letters
spilled from the pages
tripped off alphabets spelling
beauty and talent and pride and
determination and that intense
preoccupation with all that
mattered:   self. Why didn't
Mummy ever twig, respond to that
outpouring, warn that no one

as happy as her daughter
could possibly pen those arcane
depths of despair, loneliness
and unperceived loss?  The
letters traversed a one-way
street with no room for
marginal notes, no corrections
no warnings, no hint of cessation.