Sylvia Plath

Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath’s son commits suicide

The son of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath has taken his own life, 46 years after his mother gassed herself while he slept. He was only a baby when his mother died but she had already sketched out what he meant to her in one of her late poems. (In Nick and the Candlestick, published in her posthumous collection Ariel)

For further information: Times Online

Nick And The Candlestick I am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactites Drip and thicken, tears The earthen womb Exudes from its dead boredom. Black bat airs Wrap me, raggy shawls, Cold homicides. They weld to me like plums. Old cave of calcium Icicles, old echoer. Even the newts are white, Those holy Joes. And the fish, the fish---- Christ! They are panes of ice, A vice of knives, A piranha Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes. The candle Gulps and recovers its small altitude, Its yellows hearten. O love, how did you get here? O embryo Remembering, even in sleep, Your crossed position. The blood blooms clean In you, ruby. The pain You wake to is not yours. Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses. With soft rugs---- The last of Victoriana. Let the stars Plummet to their dark address, Let the mercuric Atoms that cripple drip Into the terrible well, You are the one Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.