The Poet's First Wife

(Vivienne Haigh-Wood Eliot on T.S. Eliot)


And when living is done
he told me one fiery night
he would like his bones
flung into my grave.

Happiness is not for me
married to a genius
happiness is for women
without a man
with a destiny.

His thick man's hands
around the lumpen knot
in my slivered throat.

He did not live with me
in this world
in our cold flat
in his mind always
the long view
at the bank
where he worked
at the pub
where he hid
searching for words
to drive his engine
into the future
with a throttle
to the core of it
all the twisted parts
buried in his past.

I withered like a grape
sucked to a raisin
sun plucked, dried out
and barren, barren.
(more)

He said he still wanted 
my needles and thrusts
the pain that kept him
from a mediocre life
that kept him
brutally alive.

He was mine, he was
me and I saw me
when I met my own eyes
in his disapproving face.

He rose from our mattress
white fingers like ice
his need for renewal
like a tremble pulse 
that shakes the heart
while I kept a nest
of buzzing hornets
under our empty bed
and was sane
to the point of insanity.

I was like a bag of ferrets
around my lovers' necks
Virginia Woolf said
I should let go
let Tom sing hymns
write doggerel
while I bathed my heart
in a cool, cool stream.

She took the stones
to the bottom muck
while I got manhandled
by the masters of lunacy
alone in a cage
of self-immolation.

This is my lament 
for a fallen world:
I waited for him
at the still point
of his sad, sad heart. 

The Poet's Poet Wife

(Sylvia Plath on Ted Hughes)


He thought marriage a nest
of scorpions, the bloody monster
that ate up many little snakes
but I was his luck, he said
our marriage his spiritual medium
from which richness spilled forth
in bed or out we struck sparks
in our lyrical folie à deux.

Searching for the naked inner voice
we left the urban crush and chaos 
for the countryside of his youth
among creatures of wilderness
lush heather, still ponds
water-voles, the tawny owl that lit
upon his dark head 
but my new position
as university teacher led to his
and we entered the rat race
in America, the beer he said
unspeakable, unspewable
like sucking old pennies
jobs that petrified his glands
crippling him with emotional dryness
in the buffed and glazed unnatural world 
of Cadillacs, fake smiles, brash opulence
brilliant hues in see-through crusts 
bright plastic, plastic everywhere.

Across the open sea again
to the constant cold rumble
the huge forge of London
pounding us down, down
my husband a public figure
in a windowless cell of fame
we struggled in self-anesthesia
the baby an exhaustive delight.

Our poetry followed close
on blood-sticky feet, we felt
trapped tight together
needing space to write
(more) 
apart 

we escaped to the moorland 
by the river he dreamed of
a rural country home 
a small hut where he could work 
a greenhouse, orchard, garden:
potatoes and beans, fresh peas
rhubarb stalks and leaves so tall
they were taking over the house!
And the birds: pheasants stalking
in bright plumes, kingfishers 
thrushes, redwings, swifts
flocking on our squishy fruit 
our seventy-one apple trees
pears, peaches—and beehives
our abundance blessed again
a second child, a son.

Elemental, part of the landscape
he grew broody, slinking
past the dream otters 
to the River Taw to fish
his new good luck charm
—not me, not anymore
I was the dead end of everything
with my duties, distractions
babies, nappies, every meal
a gourmet production, meanwhile
I paled, withered in comparison
to the bohemian free life
with her, his archetypal witch.

What happens in the heart
simply happens, he said.
Mine fractured into shards.

My poetry carried me forth
on a bareback ride of eloquent rage
to the city, to Yeats' old home
where I wrote in a red fury
the best poems of my life
snowed in with two babies
knocked on tranquilizers 
flu and frozen pipes
(more)
singular pain rippling through
familiar from days in the hole
they pulled me out and shrunk me
down, down to fit the mold.

He drove through a blizzard
to bring me cold potatoes
from our country garden
and I knew he still cared
I was the hedgehog he loved
prickles that kept him attached
my Hanged Man was moon tossed
by my depressionist art
by my undertow to darkness
my death-ray stares
my loaded crossbow 
my impossible interference
in his explosive stardom and lusts.

Snowdrifts up to the windows
and me in my thin nightgown
kneeling before the oven door
deep in domestic depression
drugged out on doctor's orders
the madwoman wife, mad life
no doubt where the blame lies
the only person who could help me
transformed me into the mat 
he wiped his black boots on
on his way out the door.
 

About the Poet:
Mickey J. Corrigan writes tropical noir with a twist of humor. Novels have been published in the US, UK, and elsewhere. Poetry has appeared in many literary journals and as chapbooks. Home lies somewhere in the wilds of Florida.