“The Witch’s Life”
by
Anne Sexton
When I was a child
there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch.
All day she peered from her second story
window
from behind the wrinkled curtains
and sometimes she would open the window
and yell: Get out of my life!
She had hair like kelp
and a voice like a boulder.
I think of her sometimes now
and wonder if I am becoming her.
My shoes turn up like a jester’s.
Clumps of my hair, as I write this,
curl up individually like toes.
I am shoveling the children out,
scoop after scoop.
Only my books anoint me,
and a few friends,
those who reach into my veins.
Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup?
Maybe I have plugged up my sockets
to keep the gods in?
Maybe, although my heart
is a kitten of butter,
I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.
Yes. It is the witch’s life,
climbing the primordial climb,
a dream within a dream,
then sitting here
holding a basket of fire.
“A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts”
by
Wallace Stevens
The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
And nothing is left except light on your fur—
There was the cat slopping its milk all day,
Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk
And August the most peaceful month.
To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;
And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;
Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself;
And east rushes west and west rushes down,
No matter. The grass is full
And full of yourself. The trees around are for you,
The whole of the wideness of night is for you,
A self that touches all edges,
You become a self that fills the four corners of night.
The red cat hides away in the fur-light
And there you are humped high, humped up,
You are humped higher and higher, black as stone—
You sit with your head like a carving in space
And the little green cat is a bug in the grass.
“Cy est Pourtraicte, Madame Ste Ursule, et les Unze Mille Vierges”
by
Wallace Stevens
from Harmonium (1923)
Ursula, in a garden, found
A bed of radishes.
She kneeled upon the ground
And gathered them,
With flowers around,
Blue, gold, pink, and green.
She dressed in red and gold brocade
And in the grass an offering made
Of radishes and flowers.
She said, “My dear,
Upon your altars,
I have placed
The marguerite and coquelicot,
And roses
Frail as April snow;
But here,” she said,
“Where none can see,
I make an offering, in the grass,
Of radishes and flowers.”
And then she wept
For fear the Lord would not accept.
The good Lord in His garden sought
New leaf and shadowy tinct,
And they were all His thought.
He heard her low accord,
Half prayer and half ditty,
And He felt a subtle quiver,
That was not heavenly love,
Or pity.
This is not writ
In any book.
“September, 1918”
by
Amy Lowell
Hey.
Hey look. Look, hey.
This is a bait and switch. The bait was a promise in the title of the post for a Blog about John Berryman’s Dream Song 265, “I don’t know one damned butterfly from another.” Hey, I’m sorry, but the switch is that I have nothing to add here—I mean what could I add here?—-like what hey I want to say, is, just read Berryman’s poem—-
I don’t know one damned butterfly from another
my ignorance of the stars is formidable,
also of dogs & ferns
except that around my house one destroys the other
When I reckon up my real ignorance, pal,
I mumble “many returns”—next time it will be nature & Thoreau
this time is Baudelaire if one had the skill
and even those problems O
At the mysterious urging of the body or Poe
reeled I with chance, insubordinate & a killer
O formal & elaborate I choose youbut I love too the spare, the hit-or-miss,
the mad, I sometimes can’t always tell them apart
As we fall apart, will you let me hear?
That would be good, that would be halfway to bliss
You said will you answer back? I cross my heart
& hope to die but not this year.
Hey, okay. I encourage you to quit now, or better yet, reread our boy Berryman. But I’ll add a little, even though I said I wouldn’t.
I don’t know one damned butterfly from another
—but I think you know about beautiful fragile transmuting things
my ignorance of the stars is formidable,
—same
also of dogs & ferns
–I know a bit about dogs; less about ferns
except that around my house one destroys the other
–I hope it’s the dogs destroying the ferns if I have to pick a side, although I’m not unsympathetic to ferns.
When I reckon up my real ignorance, pal,
I mumble “many returns”—
–This is a great rhyme. I feel like I’m the speaker’s pal here too—maybe it’s all the wine I’ve put down my fat throat, but I feel like I get what he’s doing here. I have some fat real ignorance my ownself.
next time it will be nature & Thoreau
–Oh give us a Transcendentalist vamp Johnny! (Or is it Henry?)
this time is Baudelaire if one had the skill
–Oh if one had the skill oh (I think you have the skill Johnny Henry)
and even those problems O
–Oh Oh O Ho oH O hO
At the mysterious urging of the body or Poe
–I’m reminded here of Dream Song 384 where Henry digs up his dead suicide father’s corpse from the grave: “I’d like to scrabble till I got right down / away down under the grass / and ax the casket open ha to see / just how he’s taking it, which he sought so hard / we’ll tear apart the mouldering grave clothes ha.” The manic ha is more indebted to Poe though than any grave openings or casket axings.
reeled I with chance, insubordinate & a killer
O formal & elaborate I choose you
–Hey but this is about Berryman’s art, his poetry, always his fucking poetry. Formal and elaborate? Out here choosing?
but I love too the spare, the hit-or-miss,
–Oh hey me too. I mean that’s my jam too Henry John.
the mad, I sometimes can’t always tell them apart
–I can’t either.
As we fall apart, will you let me hear?
That would be good, that would be halfway to bliss
–I think we’d all like to be let to hear.
You said will you answer back? I cross my heart
& hope to die but not this year.
-Not this year
“Christmas Eve” by Anne Sexton
Oh sharp diamond, my mother!
I could not count the cost
of all your faces, your moods-
that present that I lost.
Sweet girl, my deathbed,
my jewel-fingered lady,
your portrait flickered all night
by the bulbs of the tree.
Your face as calm as the moon
over a mannered sea,
presided at the family reunion,
the twelve grandchildren
you used to wear on your wrist,
a three-months-old baby,
a fat check you never wrote,
the red-haired toddler who danced the twist,
your aging daughters, each one a wife,
each one talking to the family cook,
each one avoiding your portrait,
each one aping your life.
Later, after the party,
after the house went to bed,
I sat up drinking the Christmas brandy,
watching your picture,
letting the tree move in and out of focus.
The bulbs vibrated.
They were a halo over your forehead.
Then they were a beehive,
blue, yellow, green, red;
each with its own juice, each hot and alive
stinging your face. But you did not move.
I continued to watch, forcing myself,
waiting, inexhaustible, thirty-five.
I wanted your eyes, like the shadows
of two small birds, to change.
But they did not age.
The smile that gathered me in, all wit,
all charm, was invincible.
Hour after hour I looked at your face
but I could not pull the roots out of it.
Then I watched how the sun hit your red sweater, your withered neck,
your badly painted flesh-pink skin.
You who led me by the nose, I saw you as you were.
Then I thought of your body
as one thinks of murder-
Then I said Mary-
Mary, Mary, forgive me
and then I touched a present for the child,
the last I bred before your death;
and then I touched my breast
and then I touched the floor
and then my breast again as if,
somehow, it were one of yours
From “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens
“O Florida, Venereal Soil”
by
Wallace Stevens
A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.
The dreadful sundry of this world,
The Cuban, Polodowsky,
The Mexican women,
The negro undertaker
Killing the time between corpses
Fishing for crayfish…
Virgin of boorish births,
Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas,
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,
You come tormenting,
Insatiable,
When you might sit,
A scholar of darkness,
Sequestered over the sea,
Wearing a clear tiara
Of red and blue and red,
Sparkling, solitary, still,
In the high sea-shadow.
Donna, donna, dark,
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations,
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover —
A hand that bears a thick-leaved fruit,
A pungent bloom against your shade.
Biblioklept 