Dust

Excerpted from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, ©1963:

“Do you know what a poem is, Esther?”

“No, what?”, I would say.

“A piece of dust.”

Then, just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, ‘So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you’re curing. They’re dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.’

And of course Buddy wouldn’t have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn’t see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick or couldn’t sleep.

And that reminded me of this depressing little ditty:

Oh, well.  At least the 70s fashion is amusing.

Full lyrics HERE.