Sylvia Plath
[Poet, b. 1932, Boston, Massachusetts, d. 1963, London.]
It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac,A palace of velvet
With windows of mirrors.
There one is safe,
There are no family photographs,
No rings through the nose, no cries.
“When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know.“Oh, sure you know,” the photographer said.
“She wants,” said Jay Cee wittily, “to be everything.”
Photographs visit me—My wife, dead and flat, in 1920 furs,
Mouth full of pearls,
Two girls
As flat as she, who whisper ‘We’re your daughters.’