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| Dylan Thomas in a characteristic pose before a bookstore reading. |
A few years ago I noticed that Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath shared a birthday, October 27—1914 in Wales for him, 1932 in Boston for her. They had little in common except that they
wrote poetry—although poetry very different in form, theme, style, and
substance—and died young each in a kind of pitiful squalor Each had crossed the
ocean and died in the other’s country, a nice cosmic balance.
That year—2012—there common birthday
also coincided with a New Moon and
where I was, at least, a howling storm of darkness.
 |
| Sylvia Plath in a similar venue battling her invisible demons. |
You know me. I am a sucker for cosmic coincidence. So I scribbled down a poem for the occasion.
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.
 |
| New Moon on a cloudy, stormy night. |
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 an oven
is no art
and
posthumous poems
no resurrection.
How black the night, dead poets.
how
black the night?
—Patrick
Murfin
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