The one who never looks up, whose eyes are lidded
And balled, like Blake's . . .
from Sylvia Plath's “Death & Co.”
I
We must be careful whom we choose
for inspiration or the muse
may turn upon us like an alien
that eats its victims from within
II
. . . eyes rolling inward see
round curve of skull the egg
the blank dome screen
with the nerves in pattern
like razorcuts over the bones
of those who yearned to be good
but never understood
their mothers husbands wives
whose lives boiling in loneliness
burned and sputtered against the wall
where the innocent and cruel line up
before the state's wrath the dogs of love
the invisible worm the mad
blind muse of Sylvia Plath . . .
III
Happy poems are hardest because
you come off like a dog wagging its tail
instead of a worried soul who reads
the papers and inhales the flaws:
the brutalization of the frail
starvation and pustulant disease
nature still red in tooth and claw
whipping us daily How weary, stale,
flat and unprofitable are these
hours days and years we stare across
And yet should we therefore fail
to see the young so very pleased
to be themselves? I say Praise without pause
a damaged world deserving our applause