Time poems
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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.
Amarantha. A Pastorall
© Richard Lovelace
Up with the jolly bird of light
Who sounds his third retreat to night;
Faire Amarantha from her bed
Ashamed starts, and rises red
The Children
© Anne Sexton
The children are all crying in their pens
and the surf carries their cries away.
They are old men who have seen too much,
their mouths are full of dirty clothes,
That Day
© Anne Sexton
This is the desk I sit at
and this is the desk where I love you too much
and this is the typewriter that sits before me
where yesterday only your body sat before me
The Inventory Of Goodbye
© Anne Sexton
I have a pack of letters,
I have a pack of memories.
I could cut out the eyes of both.
I could wear them like a patchwork apron.
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.
Gratitude
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
If gratitude a poor man's virtue is,
'Tis one at least my sick soul can afford.
Bankrupt I am of all youth's charities,
But not of thanks. No. Thanks be to the Lord!
On The Gallows
© Jonathan Swift
There is a gate, we know full well,
That stands 'twixt Heaven, and Earth, and Hell,
Where many for a passage venture,
Yet very few are fond to enter:
And One For My Dame
© Anne Sexton
A born salesman,
my father made all his dough
by selling wool to Fieldcrest, Woolrich and Faribo.
Unknown Girl In A Maternity Ward
© Anne Sexton
Child, the current of your breath is six days long.
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;
lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed
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.
Upon His Majesty's Happy Return
© Edmund Waller
The rising sun complies with our weak sight,
First gilds the clouds, then shows his globe of light
At such a distance from our eyes, as though
He knew what harm his hasty beams would do.
Doors, Doors, Doors
© Anne Sexton
Old man, it's four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly bigger than your bed.
Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin tail and the wornout tread.
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.
Colemira. A Culinary Eclogue
© William Shenstone
Nec tantum Veneris, quantum studiosa culinae.
Imitation.
Insensible of soft desire,
Behold Colemira prove
More partial to the kitchen fire
Than to the fire of Love.
