51�Թ�

He tinkered with his draft for a further quarter of an hour, then threaded in new sheets and typed up a fair copy.

He never wrote out fair copies of these jottings for me, fugitive as were the marks and impossible of interpretation.

He had been unable to get a typist to the island to batter out a fair copy of the novel for his publisher.

Within minutes, both the original and the fair copy were ash.

The only person who knew of this poem’s existence, because Hughes had given her a typed fair copy of it, was the poet’s widow, Carol.