Anne Sexton

“After Auschwitz"Anger,as black as a hook,overtakes me.Each day,each Nazitook, at 8: 00 A.M., a babyand sauteed him for breakfastin his frying pan.And death looks on with a casual eyeand picks at the dirt under his fingernail.Man is evil,I say aloud.Man is a flowerthat should be burnt,I say aloud.Manis a bird full of mud,I say aloud.And death looks on with a casual eyeand scratches his anus.Man with his small pink toes,with his miraculous fingersis not a templebut an outhouse,I say aloud.Let man never again raise his teacup.Let man never again write a book.Let man never again put on his shoe.Let man never again raise his eyes,on a soft July night.Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.I say those things aloud.I beg the Lord not to hear.”

“The children are all crying in their pensand the surf carries their cries away.They are old men who have seen too much,their mouths are full of dirty clothes,the tongues poverty, tears like puss.The surf pushes their cries back.Listen.”

“You who have inhabited me in the deepest and most broken place, are going, going”

“I’ll put it out there: I am scarred by the nostalgic indicipherability of my own desires; I an engulfed by the intimidating unknown, pushed through darkness and dragged down by the irretrievable past sweetness of my memories.”

“It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious”

“And I. I too.Quite collected at cocktail parties,meanwhile in my headI'm undergoing open-heart surgery.”

“TuesdayI have invented a lie.There is no other day but Monday.It seemed reasonable to pretendthat I could change the daylike a pair of socks.To tell the truthdays are all the same sizeand words aren't much company.If I were sick, I'd be a child,tucked in under the woolens, sipping my broth.As it is,the days are not worth grabbing or lying about.Nevertheless, you are the only onethat I can bother with this matter. MondayIt would be pleasant to be drunk:faithless to my tongue and hands,giving up the boundariesfor the heroic gin.Dead drunkis the term I think of,insensible,neither cool nor warm,without a head or foot.To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.I will try it shortly.”

“The snow has quietness in it; no songs,no smells, no shouts or traffic.When I speakmy own voice shocks me.”

“ركوب المصعد باتجاه السماءــــــــــــــــــــكما قال الاطفائي:لا تحجز غرفة في الطابق الخامسفي أي فندق في نيويورك.إن فيها سلالم تصل إلى أعلى من ذلكولكن لن يتسلقها أحد.كما قالت صحيفة نيويورك تايمز:المصعد دائما يبحثعن طابق الحريقوينفتح آلياولن ينغلق.ها هي التحذيراتالتي عليك أن تنساهاإن كنت تتسلق خارجا من ذاتكإن كنت ستنطلق بقوة باتجاه السماء.مرات عدة تجاوزتُالطابقَ الخامسأتلوّى صاعداإلا إنني لم أصل إلى هناكإلا مرة واحدة.الطابق الستون:نبتات صغيرة وبجعاتتنعطف متجهة إلى قبرها.الطابق المائتان:جبال صبرها صبر قطة،صمت يرتدي حذاءه الخفيف.الطابق الخمسمائة:رسائلُ وخطابات عمرها قرون،طيورٌ تشربمطبخٌ من سُحُب.الطابقُ الستة آلاف:النجومُ،هياكلُ عظمية تشتعل فيها النيران،أذرعُها تغني.ومفتاح،مفتاح كبير جدا،يفتح شيئا –في مكان ما –هناك فوق.”

“Out of used furniture she made a tree.”

“I rot on the wall, my ownDorian Gray.”

“And tonight our skin, our bones,that have survived our fathers,will meet, delicate in the hold,fastened together in an intricate lock.Then one of us will shout,"My need is more desperate!" andI will eat you slowly with kisseseven though the killer in youhas gotten out.”

“WordsBe careful of words,even the miraculous ones.For the miraculous we do our best,sometimes they swarm like insectsand leave not a sting but a kiss.They can be as good as fingers.They can be as trusty as the rockyou stick your bottom on.But they can be both daisies and bruises.Yet I am in love with words.They are doves falling out of the ceiling.They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.They are the trees, the legs of summer,and the sun, its passionate face.Yet often they fail me.I have so much I want to say,so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.But the words aren't good enough,the wrong ones kiss me.Sometimes I fly like an eaglebut with the wings of a wren.But I try to take careand be gentle to them.Words and eggs must be handled with care.Once broken they are impossiblethings to repair.”

“I’m lost. And it’s my own fault. It’s about time I figured out that I can’t ask people to keep me found.”

“Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.”

“Do you like me?”No answer.Silence bounced, fell off his tongueand sat between usand clogged my throat.It slaughtered my trust.It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.We exchanged blind words,and I did not cry,I did not beg,but blackness filled my ears,blackness lunged in my heart,and something that had been good,a sort of kindly oxygen,turned into a gas oven.”

“I like you; your eyes are full of language."[Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]”

“Then all this became history.Your hand found mine.Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot.Oh, my carpenter,the fingers are rebuilt.They dance with yours.”

“Don’t worry if they say you’re crazy. They said that about me and yet I was saner than all of them. I knew. No matter. You know. Insane or sane, you know. It’s a good thing to know - no matter what they call it.”

“We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it!”

“and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,and I grew, I grew,I wore rubies and bought tomatoesand now, in my middle age,about nineteen in the head I'd say,I am rowing, I am rowingthough the oarlocks stick and are rustyand the sea blinks and rollslike a worried eyebal,but I am rowing, I am rowing,though the wind pushes me backand I know that that island will not be perfect,it will have the flaws of life,the absurdities of the dinner table,but there will be a doorand I will open itand I will get rid of the rat insdie me,the gnawing pestilential rat.God will take it with his two handsand embrace it”

“At night the bats will beat on the trees, knowing it all, seeing what they sensed all day....”

“Live or die, but don't poison everything...Well, death's been herefor a long time --it has a hell of a lotto do with helland suspicion of the eyeand the religious objectsand how I mourned themwhen they were made obsceneby my dwarf-heart's doodle.The chief ingredientis mutilation.And mud, day after day,mud like a ritual,and the baby on the platter,cooked but still human,cooked also with little maggots,sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,the damn bitch!Even so,I kept right on going on,a sort of human statement,lugging myself as ifI were a sawed-off bodyin the trunk, the steamer trunk.This became perjury of the soul.It became an outright lieand even though I dressed the bodyit was still naked, still killed.It was caughtin the first place at birth,like a fish.But I play it, dressed it up,dressed it up like somebody's doll.Is life something you play?And all the time wanting to get rid of it?And further, everyone yelling at youto shut up. And no wonder!People don't like to be toldthat you're sickand then be forcedto watchyoucomedown with the hammer.Today life opened inside me like an eggand there insideafter considerable diggingI found the answer.What a bargain!There was the sun,her yolk moving feverishly,tumbling her prize --and you realize she does this daily!I'd known she was a purifierbut I hadn't thoughtshe was solid,hadn't known she was an answer.God! It's a dream,lovers sprouting in the yardlike celery stalksand better,a husband straight as a redwood,two daughters, two sea urchings,picking roses off my hackles.If I'm on fire they dance around itand cook marshmallows.And if I'm icethey simply skate on mein little ballet costumes.Here,all along,thinking I was a killer,anointing myself dailywith my little poisons.But no.I'm an empress.I wear an apron.My typewriter writes.It didn't break the way it warned.Even crazy, I'm as niceas a chocolate bar.Even with the witches' gymnasticsthey trust my incalculable city,my corruptible bed.O dearest three,I make a soft reply.The witch comes onand you paint her pink.I come with kisses in my hoodand the sun, the smart one,rolling in my arms.So I say Liveand turn my shadow three times roundto feed our puppies as they come,the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!Despite the pails of water that waited,to drown them, to pull them down like stones,they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blueand fumbling for the tiny tits.Just last week, eight Dalmatians,3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord woodeachlike abirch tree.I promise to love more if they come,because in spite of crueltyand the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.The poison just didn't take.So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,repeating The Black Mass and all of it.I say Live, Live because of the sun,the dream, the excitable gift.”

“When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.”

“Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen.”

“From "Her Kind"I have found the warm caves in the woods, filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, closets, silks, innumerable goods; fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: whining, rearranging the disaligned.A woman like that is misunderstood.I have been her kind.”

“Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women" Perhaps I was born kneeling, born coughing on the long winter, born expecting the kiss of mercy, born with a passion for quicknessand yet, as things progressed, I learned early about the stockadeor taken out, the fume of the enema.By two or three I learned not to kneel, not to expect, to plant my fires undergroundwhere none but the dolls, perfect and awful, could be whispered to or laid down to die.Now that I have written many words, and let out so many loves, for so many, and been altogether what I always was—a woman of excess, of zeal and greed, I find the effort useless.Do I not look in the mirror, these days, and see a drunken rat avert her eyes? Do I not feel the hunger so acutelythat I would rather die than lookinto its face? I kneel once more, in case mercy should comein the nick of time.”

“The Witch's Life"When I was a childthere was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.All day she peered from her second storywindowfrom behind the wrinkled curtainsand sometimes she would open the windowand yell: Get out of my life!She had hair like kelpand a voice like a boulder.I think of her sometimes nowand wonder if I am becoming her.”

“The summer has seized you,as when, last month in Amalfi, I sawlemons as large as your desk-side globe-that miniature map of the world-and I could mention, too,the market stalls of mushroomsand garlic bugs all engorged.Or I even think of the orchard next door,where the berries are doneand the apples are beginning to swell.And once, with our first backyard,I remember I planted an acre of yellow beanswe couldn’t eat.”

“I lay there silently,hoarding my small dignity.I did not ask about the gate or the closet.I did not question the bedtime ritualwhere, on the cold bathroom tiles,I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws.I did not knowthat my bones,those solids, those pieces of sculpturewould not splinter.”

“She suffers according to the digitsof my hate. I hear the filamentsof alabaster. I would lie downwith them and lift my madnessoff like a wig. I would lieoutside in a room of wooland let the snow cover me.Paris white or flake whiteor argentine, all in the washbasinof my mouth, calling “Oh.”I am empty. I am witless.Death is here. There is noother settlement.”

“The town does not existexcept where one black-haired tree slipsup like a drowned woman into the hot sky.”

“The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not.”

“Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like...you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.”

“God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went out of my fingers. They became stone. My body became a side of mutton and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.”

“Look to your heartthat flutters in and out like a moth.God is not indifferent to your need.You have a thousand prayersbut God has one.”

“God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.”

“And if I triedto give you something else,something outside myself,you would not knowthat the worst of anyonecan be, finally,an accident of hope”

“I am your dwarf.I am the enemy within.I am the boss of your dreams.See. Your hand shakes.It is not palsy or booze.It is your Doppelgangertrying to get out.Beware...Beware...”

“The little girl skipped by under the wrinkled oak leaves and held fast to a replica of herself.”

“Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.”

“Need is not quite belief.”

“Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.”

“Not that it was beautiful, but that, in the end, there was a certain sense of order there; something worth learning in that narrow diary of my mind”

“And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself”

“Keeping The City"Unless the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman guardeth in vain" - John F. Kennedy's unspoken words in Dallas on November 23, 1963.Once,in August,head on your chest,I heard wingsbattering up the place,something inside trying to fly outand I was silentand attentive,the watchman.I was your small public,your small audiencebut it was you that was clapping,it was you untying the snarls and knots,the webs, all bloody and gluey;you with your twelve tongues and twelve wingsbeating, wresting, beating, beatingyour way out of childhood,that airless net that fastened you down.Since then I was more silentthough you had gone miles away,tearing down, rebuilding the fortress.I was therebut could do nothingbut guard the citylest it break.I was silent.I had a strange idea I could overhearbut that your voice, tongue, wingbelonged solely to you.The Lord was silent too.I did not know if he could keep you whole,where I, miles away, yet head on your chest,could do nothing. Not a single thing.The wings of the watchman,if I spoke, would hurt the bird of your soulas he nested, bit, sucked, flapped.I wanted him to fly, burst like a missile from your throat,burst from the spidery-mother-web,burst from Woman herselfwhere too many had laid out lightsthat stuck to you and left a burnthat smarted into your middle age.The cityof my choicethat I guardlike a butterfly, useless, uselessin her yellow costume, swirlingswirling around the gates.The city shifts, falls, rebuilds,and I can do nothing.A watchmanshould be on the alert,but never cocksure.And The Lord -who knows what he keepeth?”

“Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.”

“Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question.”

“I suffer for birds and firefliesbut not frogs, she said,and threw him across the room.Kaboom!Like a genie out of a samovar,a handsome prince arose in the corner of the bedroom.”

“Wanting to Die Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.Then the almost unnameable lust returns.Even then I have nothing against life. I know well the grass blades you mention,the furniture you have placed under the sun.But suicides have a special language.Like carpenters they want to know which tools.They never ask why build.Twice I have so simply declared myself,have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,have taken on his craft, his magic.In this way, heavy and thoughtful,warmer than oil or water,I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.I did not think of my body at needle point.Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.Suicides have already betrayed the body.Still-born, they don't always die,but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweetthat even children would look on and smile.To thrust all that life under your tongue!—that, all by itself, becomes a passion.Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,and yet she waits for me, year after year,to so delicately undo an old wound,to empty my breath from its bad prison.Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,leaving the page of the book carelessly open,something unsaid, the phone off the hookand the love, whatever it was, an infection.”