HAMMER FILM FEMME FATALE 

—for Sylvia Plath


“I see her as a kind
of Hammer Films poet”
—Philip Larkin
Letter to Judy Egerton
10 June 1960
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She didn’t imagine it—
something else was there 

Beside the ticking clock—
I moved onto her blank page 
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Something more nearer—
than the darkness inside her

Yorkshire was stalking her—
coldly, delicately in the dark
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I had two wolf eyes—
I was getting closer & closer

Soon I would be inside her—
then there’d be no turning back
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She felt me up down there—
where a man knows he’s a man

Her eyes became my eyes—
we were deep inside the forest now
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Her wolf eyes saw everything—
now & again now, & now, & now 

Neat prints into the snow—
between trees, she learned to lurk
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Shadows by stump dark in hollows 
with my new bold wolfish lady 

Across a clearing, I saw her—
All concerned with her business
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A widening deepening naivete—
silly girl so brilliant & poetic

Desiring to be a British poet—
little could she possibly know
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Another ambitious American—
a Hammer film femme fatale 

Till, with a sudden sharp stink—
of wolf she realized the truth
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Her Mytholmroyd wolf—
he’d eat her up alive

We ancient Yorkshire wolves—
thrived on Fulbright scholars
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We ate ‘em alive & screamy—
innocent naïve American rubes

Little Red Riding Hood poetesses—
thinking Arial could save them
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Sticking her head in the oven—
deep in there with my help

And so the clock ticked—
this page gets printed.