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Thursday, April 15, 2004

# Posted 6:04 AM by Patrick Belton  

A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR FOREMOST READER, AND MY BELOVED WIFE: To Rachel, with many happy returns of the day, from the three of us....
First sight. First snapshot isolated
Unalterable, stilled in the camera's glare.
Taller
Than you ever were again.
Swaying so slender
It seemed your long, perfect, American legs
Simply went on up.
That flaring hand,
Those long, balletic, monkey-elegant fingers.
And the face - a tight ball of joy.
I see you there, clearer, more real Than in any of the years in its shadow - As if I saw you that once, then never again.
Ted Hughes, "St. Botolph's," Birthday Letters (about his first meeting Sylvia Plath at Cambridge in 1956)
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