Your face broods from my table, Suicide. <br />Your force came on like a torrent toward the end <br />of agony and wrath. <br />You were christened in the beginning Sylvia Plath <br />and changed that name for Mrs Hughes and bred <br />and went on round the bend <br /> <br />till the oven seemed the proper place for you. <br />I brood upon your face, the geography of grief, <br />hooded, till I allow <br />again your resignation from us now <br />though the screams of orphaned children fix me anew. <br />Your torment here was brief, <br /> <br />long falls your exit all repeatingly, <br />a poor exemplum, one more suicide, <br />to stack upon the others <br />till stricken Henry with his sisters & brothers <br />suddenly gone pauses to wonder why he <br />alone breasts the wronging tide.<br /><br />John Berryman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dream-song-172/
