Rigged poker -stiff on her back <br />With a granite grin <br />This antique museum-cased lady <br />Lies, companioned by the gimcrack <br />Relics of a mouse and a shrew <br />That battened for a day on her ankle-bone. <br /> <br />These three, unmasked now, bear <br />Dry witness <br />To the gross eating game <br />We'd wink at if we didn't hear <br />Stars grinding, crumb by crumb, <br />Our own grist down to its bony face. <br /> <br />How they grip us through think and thick, <br />These barnacle dead! <br />This lady here's no kin <br />Of mine, yet kin she is: she'll suck <br />Blood and whistle my narrow clean <br />To prove it. As I think now of her hand, <br /> <br />From the mercury-backed glass <br />Mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother <br />Reach hag hands to haul me in, <br />And an image looms under the fishpond surface <br />Where the daft father went down <br />With orange duck-feet winnowing this hair —- <br /> <br />All the long gone darlings: They <br />Get back, though, soon, <br />Soon: be it by wakes, weddings, <br />Childbirths or a family barbecue: <br />Any touch, taste, tang's <br />Fit for those outlaws to ride home on, <br /> <br />And to sanctuary: usurping the armchair <br />Between tick <br />And tack of the clock, until we go, <br />Each skulled-and-crossboned Gulliver <br />Riddled with ghosts, to lie <br />Deadlocked with them, taking roots as cradles rock.<br /><br />Sylvia Plath<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/all-the-dead-dears/
