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
But even in a telephone booth evil can seep out of the receiver and we must cover it with a mattress, and then tear it from its roots and bury it, bury it.
Evil is maybe lying to God. Or better, lying to love.
Rats live on no evil star
Take adultery or theft. Merely sins. It is evil who dines on the soul, stretching out its long bone tongue. It is evil who tweezers my heart, picking out its atomic worms.
You must be a poet, a lady of evil luck desiring to be what you are not, longing to be what you can only visit.
What a lay me down this is with two pink, two orange, two green, two white goodnights.
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....
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.
When the cow gives blood and the Christ is born we must all eat sacrifices. We must all eat beautiful women.
Then God spoke to me and said: People say only good things about Christmas. If they want to say something bad, they whisper.
Let God be some tribal female who is known but forbidden.
For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling.
I want to kiss God on His nose and watch Him sneeze and so do you. Not out of disrespect. Out of pique. Out of a man-to-man thing.