Another

I saw with sadness this morning that Nicholas Hughes, who as a baby slept through perhaps the most infamous scene of 20th century poetry--the suicide of his mother Sylvia Plath in 1962--killed himself last week in Alaska, where he worked as a biologist.

I had wondered before what had become of him and his sister.

Here is Plath's poem "Child:"

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.

I want to fill it with color and ducks,

The zoo of the new

Whose names you meditate--

April snowdrop, Indian pipe,

Little

Stalk without wrinkle,

Pool in which images

Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous

Wringing of hands, this dark

Ceiling without a star.