Suicide

[heslopian]

It's been a while since I've talked about you,
afraid of what the snobs might say,
those self-conscious academics

who panic their wings at such meat.
But just as Whitsun called Larkin
from his rest to wake the pen,

so we arrange to meet again.
Oh guileless three syllables
does my stepmother live?

Haunting her old house
beside the field
where once her eldest child played.

Does she walk the streets a shade?
The savage God, said Alvarez
nine years after Plath's leaving.

I'm not sure. All I know is
the fear of silence, the ignorant dimming,
the hush. A light bulb wanes in its white noose,

and so the soul is jimmied loose.