What I loved about this poem was that it allowed me to visit that strange, 
lonely grave, and it put me there vividly, so much so that I could feel all the 
loneliness and the pathos of that one life lived like a thunderbolt and over 
so quickly.  I well remember the winter that Plath died.  It was 1963, the 
worst winter in a hundred years.  Trains were late, and so the expected char did 
not show up to save Plath as she had been rescued so many times before from 
earlier attempts.  I was living in Banbury then and suffering through that 
winter, too.  Remembering, ah, how vividly.  It is hard to believe how many years 
ago that was.  Thank you, Arthur, for this poem.  Sue

<< 
 Heptonstall: 2003 
 
  
 
 This is a place 
 
 where storms gather
 
 and destroy.
 
  
 
 The old church 
 
 brought down 
 
 by the mindless violence of lightning,
 
  
 
 a carved coping 
 
 of the new, bludgeoned loose
 
 by another blow.   
 
  
 
 Beyond the shades 
 
 of the curiously coupled churches,
 
 ash and phoenix,
 
  
 
 across a small dirt road
 
 into a neighbouring field,
 
 I find her.
 
  
 
 Someone has picked 
 
 at the scab of earth,
 
 caressed her while cursing him,
 
  
 
 planted flowers,
 
 limp in the heat,
 
 and a ragged mosaic of flat stones,
 
  
 
 artless 
 
 as a child’s fancy 
 
 on a summer beach,
 
  
 
 the headstone 
 
 heavily erect over her,
 
 ‘Sylvia Plath Hughes’,
 
  
 
 Lady Lazurus unrisen.
 
  
 
 All poets, it seems, must die,
 
 mouths plugged with soil,
 
 lips edited by worms, 
 
  
 
 chemistry stopped, 
 
 direction altered unalterably,
 
 broken, left to change,
 
  
 
 under the blue benign,
 
 into the mute pathos 
 
 of limp flowers
 
  
 
 the wound 
 
 not let to heal
 
 under the obliterations of grass. >>