Framed in her phoenix fire-screen, Edna Ward

Bends to the tray of Canton, pouring tea

For frightened Mrs. Plath; then, turning toward

The pale, slumped daughter, and my wife, and me,

Asks if we would prefer it weak or strong.

We will have milk or lemon, she enquires?

The visit seems already strained and long.

Each in his turn, we tell her our desires.

It is my office to exemplify

The published poet in his happiness,

Thus cheering Sylvia, who has wished to die;

But I’m half-ashamed, and impotent to bless,

I am a stupid life-guard who has found,

Swept to his shallows by the tide, a girl

Who, far from shore, has been immensely drowned,

And stares through water now with eyes of pearl.

How deep is her refusal; and how slight

The genteel chat whereby we recommend

Life, of a summer afternoon, despite

The brewing dusk which hints that it may end.

And Edna Ward shall die in fifteen years,

After her eight-and-eighty summers of

Such grace and courage as permit no tears,

The thin hand reaching out, the last word love,

Outliving Sylvia who, condemned to live,

Shall study for a decade, as she must,

To state at last her brilliant negative

In poems free and helpless and unjust.