1952 yılında Cambridge’ın hemen dışındaki araziyi temizleyen inşaat işçileri temizlik sırasında kurşun kaplı bir tabut içinde yün kefen sarılmış bir iskelet buldular. M.S 4. Yüzyüzyılda yaşamış Romalı zengin bir kadına ait olan iskeletin yanında onu kemiren farelerin de kemikleri bulunuyordu. İskelet, daha sonra Cambridge Üniversitesi Arkeoloji ve antropoloji müzesinde sergilenir.
Sylvia Plath 1955- 57 yıllarında Cambridge Newnham kolej günlerindeyken müze ziyaretinde iskeleti görür ve ondan etkilenerek ‘All the Dead Dears’ isimli şiirini yazar sonradan.
Sylvia Plath – All the Dead Dears
In the Archæological Museum in Cambridge is a stone
coffin of the fourth century A.D. containing the skeletons
of a woman, a mouse and a shrew. The ankle-bone of the
woman has been slightly gnawed
Rigged poker -stiff on her back
With a granite grin
This antique museum-cased lady
Lies, companioned by the gimcrack
Relics of a mouse and a shrew
That battened for a day on her ankle-bone
These three, unmasked now, bear
Dry witness
To the gross eating game
We’d wink at if we didn’t hear
Stars grinding, crumb by crumb,
Our own grist down to its bony face.
How they grip us through think and thick,
These barnacle dead!
This lady here’s no kin
Of mine, yet kin she is: she’ll suck
Blood and whistle my narrow clean
To prove it. As I think now of her hand,
From the mercury-backed glass
Mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother
Reach hag hands to haul me in,
And an image looms under the fishpond surface
Where the daft father went down
With orange duck-feet winnowing this hair
All the long gone darlings: They
Get back, though, soon,
Soon: be it by wakes, weddings,
Childbirths or a family barbecue:
Any touch, taste, tang’s
Fit for those outlaws to ride home on,
And to sanctuary: usurping the armchair
Between tick
And tack of the clock, until we go,
Each skulled-and-crossboned Gulliver
Riddled with ghosts, to lie
Deadlocked with them, taking roots as cradles rock ✪
