Marilyn Monroe died 50 years ago last week.

Her image continues to fascinate. Here is how Edwin Morgan responded to her tragic end in his 1968 collection, The Second Life. The complete poem can also be found in Morgan's Collected Poems (Carcanet).

from THE DEATH OF MARILYN MONROE

What innocence? Whose guilt? What eyes? Whose breast?

Crumpled orphan, nembutal bed,

white hearse, Los Angeles,

DiMaggio! Los Angeles! Miller! Los Angeles! America!

That Death should seem the only protector -

That all arms should have faded, and the great cameras and lights

become an inquisition and a torment -

That the many acquaintances, the autograph-hunters, the

inflexible directors, the drive-in admirers should become

a blur of incomprehension and pain -

That lonely Uncertainty should limp up, grinning, with

bewildering barbiturates, and watch her undress and lie

down and in her anguish

call for him! call for him to strengthen her with what could

only dissolve her! A method

of dying, we are shaken, we see it. Strasberg!

Los Angeles! Olivier! Los Angeles! Others die

anfd yet by this death we are a little shaken, we feel it,

America.