And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
Anne SextonI find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last yearโs cupful and downward into a decadeโs quart and downward into a lifetimeโs ocean. I alternate treading water and deadmanโs float.
Anne SextonIf I could blame it on all the mothers and fathers of the world, they of the lessons, the pellets of power, they of the love surrounding you like batter ... Blame it on God perhaps? He of the first opening that pushed us all into our first mistakes? No, I'll blame it on Man For Man is God and man is eating the earth up like a candy bar and not one of them can be left alone with the ocean for it is known he will gulp it all down. The stars (possibly) are safe. At least for the moment. The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death.
Anne Sexton