Anne Sexton Quotes

June and July?
These are the months
we call Boiling Water.

The butterfly owns her now.
It covers her and her wounds.

I was born doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are.

I am going to lose myself – or else, the chance is that poetry will save me.

You fell, she said, just remember you fell.
I fell, is all he told the doctors
in the big hospital. A nice lady came
and asked him questions but because
he didn't want to be sent away he said, I fell.
He never said anything else although he could talk fine.

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.

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 end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail

I don’t know if I can go on spilling myself out to people — those strange strangers.

I refuse to remember the dead.
And the dead are bored with the whole thing.
But you - you go ahead,
go on, go back down,
into the graveyard,
lie down where you think their faces are;
talk back to your old bad dreams.

"To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph"

Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that feel back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

Death, with one-eyed jack in his hand,
makes a promise to the thirteenth child.

It is not enough to read Hesse
and drink clam chowder,
we must have the answers.

I am mad the way young girls are mad,
with an offering, an offering.

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.