Anne Sexton
Anne Sexton
Anne Sextonwas an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Themes of her poetry include her long battle against depression and mania, suicidal tendencies, and various intimate details from her private life, including her relationships with her husband and children...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 November 1928
CityNewton, MA
CountryUnited States of America
Yet love enters my blood like an I.V., dripping in its little white moments.
The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood.
My death from the wrists, two name tags, blood worn like a corsage to bloom one on the left and one on the right.
There is a good look that I wear like a blood clot. I have sewn it over my left breast. I have made a vocation of it.
Somebody who should have been born is gone. Yes, woman, such logic will lead to loss without death. Or say what you meant, you coward . . . this baby that I bleed.
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.
As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.
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.
What a lay me down this is with two pink, two orange, two green, two white goodnights.
Watch out for love (unless it is true, and every part of you says yes including the toes), it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream won't be heard and none of your running will run.
I, in my brand new body, which was not a woman's yet, told the stars my questions and thought God could really see the heat and the painted light, elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.
If you meet a cross-eyed person you must plunge into the grass, alongside the chilly ants, fish through the green fingernails and come up with the four-leaf clover....
The family story tells, and it was told true, of my great-grandfather who begat eight genius children and bought twelve almost new grand pianos. He left a considerable estate when he died.
My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat.