Written by
Anne Sexton |
Leaping, leaping, leaping,
down line by line,
growling at the cadavers,
filling the holy jugs with their piss,
falling into windows and mauling the parents,
but soft, kiss-soft,
and sobbing sobbing
into their awful dog dish.
No point? No twist for you
in my white tunnel?
Let me speak plainly,
let me whisper it from the podium--
Mother, may I use your pseudonym?
May I take the dove named Mary
and shove out Anne?
May I take my check book, my holographs,
my eight naked books,
and sign it Mary, Mary, Mary
full of grace?
I know my name is not offensive
but my feet hang in the noose.
I want to be white.
I want to be blue.
I want to be a bee digging into an onion heart,
as you did to me, dug and squatted
long after death and its fang.
Hail Mary, full of me,
Nibbling in the sitting room of my head.
Mary, Mary, virgin forever,
whore forever,
give me your name,
give me your mirror.
Boils fester in my soul,
so give me your name so I may kiss them,
and they will fly off,
nameless
but named,
and they will fly off like angel food dogs
with thee
and with thy spirit.
Let me climb the face of my kitchen dog
and fly off into my terrified years.
|
Written by
David Lehman |
In Rotterdam I'm
going to speak about
the state of poetry
on a panel with a Pole
and a Turk.
It's worth
being alive to utter
that sentence.
A
German from Furth,
my father's home town
and Henry Kissinger's,
will preside.
His name
is Joachim Sartorius,
which sounds like a
pseudonym Kierkegaard
might use to condemn
the habits of his age
and ours when nothing
ever happens but the
publicity is immediate
and the town meeting
ends with the people
convinced they have
rebelled so now they
can go home quietly
having spent a most
pleasant evening
|