New Poetry—How Black the Night

The other day I noted that it was the mutual birthday of Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath, who had not much in common except that they wrote poetry and died young each in a kind of pitiful squalor.  It was also the night of a New Moon and where I was, at least, a howling storm of darkness. 

Writing poetry about poets, both infinitely more gifted than I, is an act of terminal hubris for which I shall be justly punished.  But here it is anyway.

How Black the Night

October 26, 2011—New Moon, 

Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath

Even the New Moon hides behind the howling clouds. 

Happy Birthday Dylan—

Why did you not

            rage, rage against the dying of the light

            in that pool of your own black vomit

            at the Chelsea?

Happy Birthday Sylvia—

The same year, you dewy goddess,

            you emptied the medicine vials

            and crawled under your mother’s porch.

Not ships passing in the night,

            but traversing the same black ocean

            away from home

            to something else.

Did you find what you were looking for

            in worship and whiskey,

            in broken love and madness?

As Dylan moldered under Laugharne,

            Lady Lazarus, you wrote.

                   Dying

   Is an art, like everything else.

   I do it exceptionally well.

But laying your head in a oven

             is no art

             and posthumous poems

             no resurrection.

How black the night, dead poets.

            how black the night?

—Patrick Murfin