Had She Never Written a Poem
Oh that as they lay there
On the floor of the family home
Taken by gas like to many of their folk
Had she never written a poem!
– For all their beauty they are not worth
The sin that only God can forgive –
Her little ones, born and unborn
Had she only let them live!
One to see life, and to live to age
To bury her some distant morn…
And cry a tear at her passing…
The other just to be born…
Background:
The poetess and translator Assia Esther Wevill (neé Gutmann) was a tragic figure in the circle and the love triangle with Sylvia Plath, and like Plath tragically took her own life. Alas compounding that she also gassed her living child, having aborted a prior pregnancy. I thought on reading her life story she was better to have lived and never written than to have written and ended as she did.