Areopagus Volume LXVII

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the sixty seventh volume of the Areopagus. Sylvia Plath would have been ninety one today, and so it is to her inimitable verse that we shall turn for our tradition of preludic poetry. This, from a poem called Blackberrying, is, I think, a rather gripping vision of the sea:

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

A moment to contemplate... and, all hushed, let the curtain rise, the lights go down, and the Areopagus begin: