Dead Poets and Dark Caves

All the Dead Dears


Sylvia Plath



In the Archaeological Museum in Cambridge is a stone


coffin of the fourth century A.D. containing the skeletons


of a woman, a mouse and a shrew. The ankle-bone of the


woman has been slightly gnawed.



Rigged poker -stiff on her back


With a granite grin


This antique museum-cased lady


Lies, companioned by the gimcrack


Relics of a mouse and a shrew


That battened for a day on her ankle-bone.



These three, unmasked now, bear


Dry witness


To the gross eating game


We'd wink at if we didn't hear


Stars grinding, crumb by crumb,


Our own grist down to its bony face.



How they grip us through think and thick,


These barnacle dead!


This lady here's no kin


Of mine, yet kin she is: she'll suck


Blood and whistle my narrow clean


To prove it.


As I think now of her hand,
From the mercury-backed glass


Mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother


Reach hag hands to haul me in,


And an image looms under the fishpond surface


Where the daft father went down


With orange duck-feet winnowing this hair ---



All the long gone darlings: They


Get back, though, soon,


Soon: be it by wakes, weddings,


Childbirths or a family barbecue:


Any touch, taste, tang's


Fit for those outlaws to ride home on,



And to sanctuary: usurping the armchair


Between tick


And tack of the clock, until we go,


Each skulled-and-crossboned Gulliver


Riddled with ghosts, to lie


Deadlocked with them, taking roots as cradles rock.