It is 1963, I am recording live the last
moments of Sylvia’s life. She invites
me as she doesn’t understand livecast.
“Have a cake” she says, “Baked in my
own oven,” her eyes twinkle. She takes
me to check on her kids. Frieda has her
arms around Nicholas sleeping secure.
I livecast the sleep.
Returning to the warm kitchen, Sylvia
plugs all gaps with rags and clothes. I
help her in turning the room into an
airtight chamber.
“Now, watch and livecast,” announces
Sylvia as she quickly moves to the oven
lets the gas out and sticks her head in.
She takes in large chunks of the gas and
sits on a chair facing me. “It bites like my
first ECT shock. My brain is clearing of
thoughts, wiped clean as a slate.”
“Feels like a gas chamber in Auschwitz,
Probably less noisy” she smiles,
recalling Daddy and Lazarus and the
Yew tree. Her head slowly droops as
the carbon monoxide kicks in.
I panic as my small camera is drooping too.
Before I can get up and open the door, the
kitchen walls come alive with the blazing
graffiti of her poems.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
it’s time to vanish like the cheshire cat.
So kiss: the drunks upon the curb and dames
in dubious doorways. Ransack the four winds.
Not God but a swastika so black no sky could
squeak through. A man in black with a
Meinkampf look. Ted*, Ted, you bastard,
I’m through.
The kitchen goes to sleep.
The camera goes to sleep.
Gwyneth Paltrow** sleeps.
- It is ‘Daddy’ in the original.
**She did the role of Sylvia in the film ‘Sylvia.’
Ra Sh ( Ravi Shanker.N) is a poet and translator based in Palakkad, Kerala. He has published four collections of poetry, Architecture of Flesh (Poetrywala), Bullet Train and Other Loaded Poems (Hawakal), Kintsugi by Hadni (RLFPA) , Buddha and Biryani (Hawakal) and a chapbook In the Mirror, Our Graves, written jointly with Ritamvara Bhattacharya. He has also published a play Blind Men Write ( Rubric Publishing.)
