what the bird with the human head knew

I went to the bird

with the human head,

and asked,

Please Sir,

where is God?

God is too busy

to be here on earth,

His angels are like one thousand geese assembled

and always flapping.

But I can tell you where the well of God is.

Is it on earth?

I asked.

He replied,

Yes. It was dragged down

from paradise by one of the geese.

I walked many days,

past witches that eat grandmothers knitting booties

as if they were collecting a debt.

Then, in the middle of the desert

I found the well,

it bubbled up and down like a litter of cats

and there was water,

and I drank,

and there was water,

and I drank.

Then the well spoke to me.

It said: Abundance is scooped from abundance,

yet abundance remains.

Then I knew.

~ Anne Sexton

.

(Few established poets nowadays have a background as non-spectacular as that of Anne Sexton (1928-1974), a mediocre student who neither went to college nor formally studied literature. For a time she worked as a fashion model. Emotional, impetuous, she even eloped at the age of 19.

.

Anne Sexton began falling to pieces in her early 20’s after the births of her two daughters. Her psychiatrist recommended writing poetry as a form of therapy; she took to the typewriter at the age of 26 and never looked back.)

(Biography from: http://katebenedict.com/lectio/sexton.html)

what's that

.

 

 

Before it came inside

I had watched it from my kitchen window,

watched it swell like a new balloon,

watched it slump and then divide,

like something I know I know —

a broken pear or two halves of the moon,

or round white plates floating nowhere

or fat hands waving in the summer air

until they fold together like a fist or a knee.

After that it came to my door. Now it lives here.

And of course: it is a soft sound, soft as a seal’s ear,

that was caught between a shape and a shape and then returned to me.

 

 

You know how parents call

from sweet beaches anywhere, come in come in

and how you sank under water to put out

the sound, or how one of them touched in the hall

at night: the rustle and the skin

you couldn’t know, but heard, the stout

slap of tides and the dog snoring. It’s here

now, caught back from time in my adult year —

the image we did forget: the crackling shells on our feet

or the swing of the spoon in soup. It is as real

as splinters stuck in your ear. The noise we steal

is half a bell. And outside cars whisk by on the suburban street

 

 

and are there and are true.

What else is this, this intricate shape of air?

calling me, calling you.

 

 

 

 

~ Anne Sexton

.

the kiss

...
My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby, you fool!
...
Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see -- Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!
...
Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.
...
My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire.
...
~ Anne Sexton