Your Blue Hour (for Sylvia Plath)

A tribute, for so many reasons.

In your blue hour, before the world awoke,
You were pristine, shining white, sharp and straight as an arrow.
You wrote like never before
Like pen and paper were invented just for you
Just for these hours.
You wrote like never before.
Oh yes these poems will make your name.
Forged in fierce flames, furious, fighting, frightened genius.
Giving birth to immortal verse
In that blue hour.

In your blue hour, driven by freezing fever,
You turned inside-out, spewing your ghosts across the pages.
Creating a new art.
Never before.  Never since.  Never never again.
The moon hid behind a cloud, awed and afraid, watching you
Creating a new art.
Oh yes you have it in you.
Sitting alone, abandoned, adrift in an abyss apart.
Giving birth to immortal verse
In that blue hour.

In your blue hour, the colour soothed you,
Moved you to say the unsayable, write the unwriteable.
Red would have hurt you.
Ghostly, he places a red tulip beside you.
But the tulip turns to dust.  You are too powerful for it.
Red would have hurt you.
Oh yes you are writing the best poems of your life.
In the worst winter weeks when weather wounds without warmth.
Giving birth to immortal verse
In that blue hour.

But later:

In your blue hour, you paced and paced.
Right on the edge, did you mean to do it?
Making your kitchen your Auschwitz.
You did it too exceptionally well this time.
You gambled your life and you lost - or did you win?
Making your kitchen your Auschwitz.
Oh yes you did it so it felt real.  It was real.
Betrayed, bereft, beaten black blue, burnt to the bare bones.
Giving birth to immortal verse
Wasn’t enough to keep you from dying
In that blue hour.

I have read your daughter’s poem “Readers,”
And I have felt ashamed.
I have read your husband’s poem “The Dogs Are Eating Your Mother,”
And I have felt ashamed.
Empathy, connections, dreams, love, aching pain for you.
All of this I feel and yet: what of it?
Strip it bare and all that remains is this:
I am a reader.  I am a dog.

But still
I will,
Still I will sing this song:

In your blue hour, when pain shrank you to nothing
You created your most terrifying art ever: your death.
No Lady Lazarus you, no rising from the ashes this time.
But I fancy your blue hour held its arms out to you –
Held you close, calmed you, soothed you, made you safe.
I see it cradling you and carrying you to a beautiful place.
Not lying in your chamber, your head in the oven –
But riding Ariel bareback.
Free, joyful, tossing your mane, your jewel eyes glittering.

This is what I sing for you
In that blue hour.

© Morney Wilson

Reviews

[Audrey Owens]

"Creating a new art.
Never before. Never since. Never never again."

So true. Nothing else compares to her works. What a very moving tribute