In Defense of Ted Hughes (2007)

The Echo of What Remains Collected Poems of Wanda Lea Brayton

                           — Inspired by his poem "The Seven Sorrows" 

It wasn't his fault
that women surrendered
to him, because of him -
he only exposed their anguish
with terrible veracity,
unkind cuts from a dull blade.

He knew the seven sorrows
and the four seasons
of more than one madness
and understood them all too well.

He carved a life
from borrowed bones,

serving fallow soil at the feast

of those who were far too hungry
for his capabilities to conquer.

It was not his doing,
untying their laces
until their final facades fell into sultry shadows
from which they could not seem

to surface.