By Sylvia Plath
Water in the millrace, through a sluice of stone,
plunges headlong into that black pond
where, absurd and out-of-season, a single swan
floats chaste as snow, taunting the clouded mind
which hungers to haul the white reflection down.
The austere sun descends above the fen,
an orange cyclops-eye, scorning to look
longer on this landscape of chagrin;
feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook,
brooding as the winter night comes on.
Last summer's reeds are all engraved in ice
as is your image in my eye; dry frost
glazes the window of my hurt; what solace
can be struck from rock to make heart's waste
grow green again? Who'd walk in this bleak place?
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It has been an upsetting week one way or another for almost everyone I know. Our longtime neighbor died Thursday morning after a brief struggle with cancer. He gave Adam his first job, gardening and working around the house (he and his wife run an AirBnb). Friday at least was fairly quiet, though we had a snow squall in the morning that made us nervous for the five or so minutes it was really coming down before it stopped just as abruptly.
I took a walk in the much colder air after the front came through, posted a review of Voyager's still-frustrating "Basics, Part One", had dinner with my parents, and watched Our Brand Is Crisis which is about as mediocre as its reviews suggest -- acting fine but screenplay all over the place, some parts too much exposition and some parts in desperate need of more explaining, not enough humor. From Brookside:
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