Written by
Emily Dickinson |
Rearrange a "Wife's" affection!
When they dislocate my Brain!
Amputate my freckled Bosom!
Make me bearded like a man!
Blush, my spirit, in thy Fastness --
Blush, my unacknowledged clay --
Seven years of troth have taught thee
More than Wifehood every may!
Love that never leaped its socket --
Trust entrenched in narrow pain --
Constancy thro' fire -- awarded --
Anguish -- bare of anodyne!
Burden -- borne so far triumphant --
None suspect me of the crown,
For I wear the "Thorns" till Sunset --
Then -- my Diadem put on.
Big my Secret but it's bandaged --
It will never get away
Till the Day its Weary Keeper
Leads it through the Grave to thee.
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Written by
Siegfried Sassoon |
Propped on a stick he viewed the August weald;
Squat orchard trees and oasts with painted cowls;
A homely, tangled hedge, a corn-stalked field,
And sound of barking dogs and farmyard fowls.
And he’d come home again to find it more
Desirable than ever it was before.
How right it seemed that he should reach the span
Of comfortable years allowed to man!
Splendid to eat and sleep and choose a wife,
Safe with his wound, a citizen of life.
He hobbled blithely through the garden gate,
And thought: ‘Thank God they had to amputate!’
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Written by
Anne Sexton |
My doctor, the comedian
I called you every time
and made you laugh yourself
when I wrote this silly rhyme.
.
.
Each time I give lectures
or gather in the grants
you send me off to boarding school
in training pants.
God damn it, father-doctor,
I'm really thirty-six.
I see dead rats in the toilet.
I'm one of the lunatics.
Disgusted, mother put me
on the potty.
She was good at this.
My father was fat on scotch.
It leaked from every orifice.
Oh the enemas of childhood,
reeking of outhouses and shame!
Yet you rock me in your arms
and whisper my nickname.
Or else you hold my hand
and teach me love too late.
And that's the hand of the arm
they tried to amputate.
Though I was almost seven
I was an awful brat.
I put it in the Easy Wringer.
It came out nice and flat.
I was an instant cripple
from my finger to my shoulder.
The laundress wept and swooned.
My mother had to hold her.
I know I was a cripple.
Of course, I'd known it from the start.
My father took the crowbar
and broke the wringer's heart.
The surgeons shook their heads.
They really didn't know--
Would the cripple inside of me
be a cripple that would show?
My father was a perfect man,
clean and rich and fat.
My mother was a brilliant thing.
She was good at that.
You hold me in your arms.
How strange that you're so tender!
Child-woman that I am,
you think that you can mend her.
As for the arm,
unfortunately it grew.
Though mother said a withered arm
would put me in Who's Who.
For years she has described it.
She sang it like a hymn.
By then she loved the shrunken thing,
my little withered limb.
My father's cells clicked each night,
intent on making money.
And as for my cells, they brooded,
little queens, on honey.
Oh boys too, as a matter of fact,
and cigarettes and cars.
Mother frowned at my wasted life.
My father smoked cigars.
My cheeks blossomed with maggots.
I picked at them like pearls.
I covered them with pancake.
I wound my hair in curls.
My father didn't know me
but you kiss me in my fever.
My mother knew me twice
and then I had to leave her.
But those are just two stories
and I have more to tell
from the outhouse, the greenhouse
where you draw me out of hell.
Father, I am thirty-six,
yet I lie here in your crib.
I'm getting born again, Adam,
as you prod me with your rib.
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