Death poems
/ page 438 of 560 /
The Double Image
© Anne Sexton
They sent me letters with news
of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
When I grew well enough to tolerate
myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
But I didn't leave. I had my portrait
done instead.
Going Gone
© Anne Sexton
Over stone walls and barns,
miles from the black-eyed Susans,
over circus tents and moon rockets
you are going, going.
Epitaph On An Infant.
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Its balmy lips the infant blest
Relaxing from its mother's breast,
How sweet it heaves the happy sigh
Of innocent satiety!
Our Sunday morning when dawn-priests were applying
© John Berryman
'Death is the mother of beauty.' Awry no leaf
Shivering with delight, we die to be well..
Careless with sleepy love, so long unloving.
What if our convalescence must be bried
As we are, the matin meet the passing bell?..
About our pines our sister, wind, is moving.
August 17th
© Anne Sexton
Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
Mr. Mine
© Anne Sexton
Notice how he has numbered the blue veins
in my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles.
Now he goes left. Now he goes right.
He is buiding a city, a city of flesh.
A Story For Rose On The Midnight Flight To Boston
© Anne Sexton
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
Oh
© Anne Sexton
It is snowing and death bugs me
as stubborn as insomnia.
The fierce bubbles of chalk,
the little white lesions
For God While Sleeping
© Anne Sexton
Sleeping in fever, I am unfair
to know just who you are:
hung up like a pig on exhibit,
the delicate wrists,
Flee On Your Donkey
© Anne Sexton
Today an intern knocks my knees,
testing for reflexes.
Once I would have winked and begged for dope.
Today I am terribly patient.
Today crows play black-jack
on the stethoscope.
On The Death Of A Friend's Child
© James Russell Lowell
Death never came so nigh to me before,
Nor showed me his mild face: oft had I mused
Rumpelstiltskin
© Anne Sexton
Inside many of us
is a small old man
who wants to get out.
No bigger than a two-year-old
The Gardener
© Katharine Tynan
In the garden she hath found
Herb of grace and fever-few;
Woundwort there doth much abound,
Heartsease too.
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
© Anne Sexton
The paralytic's wife
who takes her love to town,
sitting on the bar stool,
downing stingers and peanuts,
singing "That ole Ace down in the hole,"
would understand.
The Touch
© Anne Sexton
The trouble is
that I'd let my gestures freeze.
The trouble was not
in the kitchen or the tulips
but only in my head, my head.
For The Year Of The Insane
© Anne Sexton
a prayerO Mary, fragile mother,
hear me, hear me now
although I do not know your words.
The black rosary with its silver Christ
Jerusalem Delivered - Book 02 - part 06
© Torquato Tasso
LXVI
"True labour in the vineyard of thy Lord,
Oh! Mr. Malthus!
© Stephen Leacock
Turn back to Malthus as he walked o'er English Fields and Downs
And walked at night the crooked Streets of crooked English Towns,
Lifeless, undying, Shade or Man, as one that could not die
A hundred years his Shadow fell, a hundred Years to lie,
The Shadow on the Window Pane when Malthus' Ghost went by.
