Anne Sexton Quotes

"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!" and
I will eat you slowly with kisses
even though the killer in you
has gotten out."

Funnel

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. The children honored their
separate arts; two became moderately famous,
three married and fattened their delicate share
of wealth and brilliance. The sixth one was
a concert pianist. She had a notable career
and wore cropped hair and walked like a man,
or so I heard when prying a childhood car
into the hushed talk of the straight Maine clan.
One died a pinafore child, she stays her five
years forever. And here is one that wrote-
I sort his odd books and wonder his once alive
words and scratch out my short marginal notes
and finger my accounts.
back from that great-grandfather I have come
to tidy a country graveyard for his sake,
to chat with the custodian under a yearly sun
and touch a ghost sound where it lies awake.
I like best to think of that Bunyan man
slapping his thighs and trading the yankee sale
for one dozen grand pianos. it fit his plan
of culture to do it big. On this same scale
he built seven arking houses and they still stand.
One, five stories up, straight up like a square
box, still dominates its coastal edge of land.
It is rented cheap in the summer musted air
to sneaker-footed families who pad through
its rooms and sometimes finger the yellow keys
of an old piano that wheezes bells of mildew.
Like a shoe factory amid the spruce trees
it squats; flat roof and rows of windows spying
through the mist. Where those eight children danced
their starfished summers, the thirty-six pines sighing,
that bearded man walked giant steps and chanced
his gifts in numbers.
Back from that great-grandfather I have come
to puzzle a bending gravestone for his sake,
to question this diminishing and feed a minimum
of children their careful slice of suburban cake.

Do you like me?”
No answer.
Silence bounced, fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and 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.

Somebody sees me, and I see myself through them. Then it’s all gone, the whole world falls apart.

Sun, you hammer of yellow,
you hat on fire,
you honeysuckle mama,
pour your blonde on me!
Let me laugh for an entire hour
at your supreme being, your Cadillac stuff,
because I've come a long way
from Brussels sprouts.

All who love have lied.

Yet love enters my blood like an I.V.,
dripping in its little white moments.

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

We make a stage set out of my past
and stuff painted puppets into it.
We make a bridge toward my future
and I cry to you: I will be steel!
I will build a steel bridge over my need!
I will build a bomb shelter over my heart!
But my future is a secret.
It is as shy as a mole.

Fee-fi-fo-fum, now I'm borrowed, now I'm numb.

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

What can I do with this memory?
Shake the bones out of it?
Defoliate the smile?
Stub out the chin with cigarettes?
Take the face of the man I love
and squeeze my foot into it,
when all the while my heart is making a museum?
I love you the way the oboe plays.
I love you the way skinny dipping makes my body feel.
I love you the way a ripe artichoke tastes.
Yet I fear you,
as one in the desert fears the sun.

Earth, earth
riding your merry-go-round
toward extinction,
right to the roots
thickening the oceans like gravy,
festering in your caves,
you are becoming a latrine.

أريـد أن أمـوت

بما أنكم تسألون، فلا أتذكّر معظم الأيام.
أسير في لباسي، لا أشعرُ بزخم الرّحيل.
حينها يعود ذاك الشّبق الذي لا يسمّى.

حتّى و إن لم يكن لدي شيءٌ ضد الحياة.
فأنا أعرف جيّدا شفير الأعشاب التي تذكرون,
ذاك الأثاث الذي وضعتم تحت حرقة الشمس.

غير أنّ الانتحارات لها لغتها الخاصّة.
تماماً مثل النجّار
يريد أن يعرف كيف يستخدم الأدوات،
لكنّه لم يسأل مطلقاً لماذا يبني!.

لمرّتين وببساطة أعلنتُ نَفْسي,
امتلكت العدُوْ, ابتلعت العُدو,
وعلى مَرْكبه أخذت معي سِحْره.

وفي هذه الطريق، مُثقلة و مُستغرقة
أدفأ من الزيت أو الماء,
أنا قد استرحت,
وسال من فوهة فمي لعاب.

لم أفكّر في جسدي عندَ وخزة الإبرة.
حتّى قرنيّتي وما بقي في من بَوْل، اختفى.
الانتحارات كانت قد خانت الجسَد مسبقاً.

اليافعون لا يموتون في العادة،
غير أنّهم يُبهرون, لا يستطيعون نسيان لذّة مُخدّر
حتّى أنّهم ينظرون للأطفال ويبتسمون.

أن تَسحَقَ كلّ تلك الحياة تحت لسانك!
ذلك بحد ذاته, يستحيلُ عاطفة.
ستقول، موت لعَظْمةٍ بائسةٍ ومُجرّحة.

ومع ذلك ستنتظرني هي عاماً بعد عام،
لأمحو هكذا برقّةٍ جُرْحاً قديماً،
لأفرّغ شهقتي من سجنها البائس.

نتّزن هنالك, الانتحارات تلتقي أحياناً,
نحتدّ عند فاكهة و قمر مفقوء,
تاركين كِسرةَ الخبز التي أخطأتها قبلاتهم.

تاركين
صفحةَ كتاب مفتوحة مُهْملة،
و سمّاعة هاتف معلّقَة
لشيء لم يُلفظ بعد,
أمّا الحُبْ، أيّاً يكُن
ليسَ إلاّ وبـاء.

Even without wars, life is dangerous.