Sometimes it is, poor Sylvia,
that we cannot find the answers. They're
not to be found clinking about in the stars,
blowing about in the August wind,
or blooming among the tea flowers, no matter
how scented. No charlatan soothsayer discerns.
No pull of the cards deciphers. If answers come
at all they'll be found deep within yourself, only.
Don't we all prove that countless, wretched
times? But know this, dear Sylvia, even though it's too
late for your sanity and your life, your daddy didn't
die because of you, for you, by you. Death simply
drew the line and pulled him across.
What were you to do when life puzzled you
to the limit, when all poems disappointed,
when the ink failed to flow smoothly,
the pen tore at the paper and the paper
turned to ash before a line could be written down?
What to do when your child's smile failed to ignite
motherhood, when Daddy's image floated in and out, when
emotional pain dragged you terrified under its
black cerement, that cold, wet, smothering grave cloth?
Fear, oh my God, fear, and the doubt that you had,
the whirling about of a shattered mind, bouncing
from this trap to the other - your muted, stifled inner
screams unheard, or worse, unexpressed. Yes,
you found a solution, poor Sylvia, but suicide
doesn't always equate with an answer. You found a
sad poem, a dirge to be exact, something that moves
us, but there is no rhyme to it and the ending is an
enigma, a great puzzle yet to be invoked, understood.
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