There should have been thunder, jagged
brilliance of lightning across the city
the night the Fulbright Scholar
claimed the piece that briefly
made the puzzle whole: a hulking
Yorkshireman with a gift for words
the equal of her own. But the only
storm in Cambridge that night
was psychic — life not always
resembling myth with Ted and Sylvia.
Why do they draw me so? Is it
purely the bladed language
the recognition in Pike of my father’s
hoodless countryman’s eye,
in Tulips a kinship with obsession?
Their opening scene was worthy
of Broadway: he tearing off her red
head band, she biting his cheek
so hard it bled. The same evening
mother felt the first stabs of labour.
I entered the world two days later
just a few hours before Sylvia, ignoring
her Racine essay, composed Pursuit,
her dark song of love and lust and death.
