It is far worse than I thought. There is a poem F used to quote to me from time to time: I remember one such time in all its detail, that is, the light on the hedge, the warm air, the smell of hydrangeas, as we parked the car in front of the house. Needing a name to these fragments, I have been looking for the poem. I believe it was Sylvia Plath, only I can remember nothing but the general sense of the lines. So I have been searching. Google, of course, is no use without any keywords, and though I have found a complete collection of Plath’s works online, I cannot find the words anywhere in them. And in truth the more I read, the less I am able to recall anything meaningful about the poem, the less sure I am that I would be able to recognize it if I did see it.

Perhaps it was not Sylvia Plath after all, or it was from one of her novels, not a poem. I have no evidence of its existence except that it must still live in F’s mind, along with so many other things I no longer have any access to.

…

Well, no, here we go:

 "The Hanging Man"

 By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
 I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.

 The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid :
 A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.

 A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
 If he were I, he would do what I did.

In another life I would have drawn hope from this. As I do from my dreams, without willing it.