In Favour of Being Alive

    Twenty-four years ago
I tried to kill myself
but with my usual incompetence
did not manage to.

    Not even one good poem
out of it.
Obviously
I was no Sylvia Plath.

    I don’t know
why I write about it now
(and even now
I am not giving details)

    except maybe I write
for hortatory or didactic reasons
to say to someone
Don’t!
It’s been a dull life
much of the time
but lots better
than no life at all.

    You don’t know how much
you may yet enjoy
just waking up
and peeling oranges

    to eat with sugar
while you listen to the clock strike
down at the Town Hall
telling you again
that you’re still here
and Sylvia Plath isn’t.