Henry’s Elegy For Sylvia Plath

October 27,1932-Feburary 11, 2007

Henry walked into the cold flat
and found Sylvia’s head
inside the oven,

and Cid Corman
had his head in there, too.
The two death poets

giggling
and butting heads
like mountain goats

in the English Alps.
The whites of their eyes
was snow.

The flakes of poetry
littered the room,
each letter of each word

made a bump on the floor.
They made a puzzle
to read.

Henry scratched his head
until the smell of gas
became too strong.

He closed the door behind him.
The London sky was mice,
the rain turned out to be a truck.

So there was not much
Henry could have done.
Just then, a line of poetry struck Big Ben,

and Henry sought
the enormity of time
with only man-made tools.

God stood by
toe-tapping
its twenty feet.