The Double Image

1. 

I am thirty this November. 
You are still small, in your fourth year. 
We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer, 
flapping in the winter rain. 
falling flat and washed. And I remember 
mostly the three autumns you did not live here. 
They said I’d never get you back again. 
I tell you what you’ll never really know: 
all the medical hypothesis 
that explained my brain will never be as true as these 
struck leaves letting go. 

I, who chose two times 
to kill myself, had said your nickname 
the mewling mouths when you first came; 
until a fever rattled 
in your throat and I moved like a pantomine 
above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The blame, 
I heard them say, was mine. They tattled 
like green witches in my head, letting doom 
leak like a broken faucet; 
as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet, 
an old debt I must assume. 

Death was simpler than I’d thought. 
The day life made you well and whole 
I let the witches take away my guilty soul. 
I pretended I was dead 
until the white men pumped the poison out, 
putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole 
of talking boxes and the electric bed. 
I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel. 
Today the yellow leaves 
go queer. You ask me where they go I say today believed 
in itself, or else it fell. 

Today, my small child, Joyce, 
love your self’s self where it lives. 
There is no special God to refer to; or if there is, 
why did I let you grow 
in another place. You did not know my voice 
when I came back to call. All the superlatives 
of tomorrow’s white tree and mistletoe 
will not help you know the holidays you had to miss. 
The time I did not love 
myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove. 
There was new snow after this. 

2. 

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. 

Part way back from Bedlam 
I came to my mother’s house in Gloucester, 
Massachusetts. And this is how I came 
to catch at her; and this is how I lost her. 
I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said. 
And she never could. She had my portrait 
done instead. 

I lived like an angry guest, 
like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child. 
I remember my mother did her best. 
She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled. 
Your smile is like your mother’s, the artist said. 
I didn’t seem to care. I had my portrait 
done instead. 

There was a church where I grew up 
with its white cupboards where they locked us up, 
row by row, like puritans or shipmates 
singing together. My father passed the plate. 
Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said. 
I wasn’t exactly forgiven. They had my portrait 
done instead. 

3. 

All that summer sprinklers arched 
over the seaside grass. 
We talked of drought 
while the salt-parched 
field grew sweet again. To help time pass 
I tried to mow the lawn 
and in the morning I had my portrait done, 
holding my smile in place, till it grew formal. 
Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit 
and a postcard of Motif number one, 
as if it were normal 
to be a mother and be gone. 

They hung my portrait in the chill 
north light, matching 
me to keep me well. 
Only my mother grew ill. 
She turned from me, as if death were catching, 
as if death transferred, 
as if my dying had eaten inside of her. 
That August you were two, by I timed my days with doubt. 
On the first of September she looked at me 
and said I gave her cancer. 
They carved her sweet hills out 
and still I couldn’t answer. 

4. 

That winter she came 
part way back 
from her sterile suite 
of doctors, the seasick 
cruise of the X-ray, 
the cells’ arithmetic 
gone wild. Surgery incomplete, 
the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard 
them say. 

During the sea blizzards 
she had here 
own portrait painted. 
A cave of mirror 
placed on the south wall; 
matching smile, matching contour. 
And you resembled me; unacquainted 
with my face, you wore it. But you were mine 
after all. 

I wintered in Boston, 
childless bride, 
nothing sweet to spare 
with witches at my side. 
I missed your babyhood, 
tried a second suicide, 
tried the sealed hotel a second year. 
On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and this 
was good. 

5. 

I checked out for the last time 
on the first of May; 
graduate of the mental cases, 
with my analysts’s okay, 
my complete book of rhymes, 
my typewriter and my suitcases. 

All that summer I learned life 
back into my own 
seven rooms, visited the swan boats, 
the market, answered the phone, 
served cocktails as a wife 
should, made love among my petticoats 

and August tan. And you came each 
weekend. But I lie. 
You seldom came. I just pretended 
you, small piglet, butterfly 
girl with jelly bean cheeks, 
disobedient three, my splendid 

stranger. And I had to learn 
why I would rather 
die than love, how your innocence 
would hurt and how I gather 
guilt like a young intern 
his symptons, his certain evidence. 

That October day we went 
to Gloucester the red hills 
reminded me of the dry red fur fox 
coat I played in as a child; stock still 
like a bear or a tent, 
like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox. 

We drove past the hatchery, 
the hut that sells bait, 
past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall’s 
Hill, to the house that waits 
still, on the top of the sea, 
and two portraits hung on the opposite walls. 

6. 

In north light, my smile is held in place, 
the shadow marks my bone. 
What could I have been dreaming as I sat there, 
all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone 
of the smile, the young face, 
the foxes’ snare. 

In south light, her smile is held in place, 
her cheeks wilting like a dry 
orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown 
love, my first image. She eyes me from that face 
that stony head of death 
I had outgrown. 

The artist caught us at the turning; 
we smiled in our canvas home 
before we chose our foreknown separate ways. 
The dry red fur fox coat was made for burning. 
I rot on the wall, my own 
Dorian Gray. 

And this was the cave of the mirror, 
that double woman who stares 
at herself, as if she were petrified 
in time — two ladies sitting in umber chairs. 
You kissed your grandmother 
and she cried. 

7. 

I could not get you back 
except for weekends. You came 
each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit 
that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack 
your things. We touch from habit. 
The first visit you asked my name. 
Now you will stay for good. I will forget 
how we bumped away from each other like marionettes 
on strings. It wasn’t the same 
as love, letting weekends contain 
us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name, 
wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying. 

You can call me mother and I remember my mother again, 
somewhere in greater Boston, dying. 

I remember we named you Joyce 
so we could call you Joy. 
You came like an awkward guest 
that first time, all wrapped and moist 
and strange at my heavy breast. 
I needed you. I didn’t want a boy, 
only a girl, a small milky mouse 
of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house 
of herself. We named you Joy. 
I, who was never quite sure 
about being a girl, needed another 
life, another image to remind me. 
And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure 
or soothe it. I made you to find me.

-Anne Sexton

Despair

Who is he?
A railroad track toward hell?
Breaking like a stick of furniture?
The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool?
The love that goes down the drain like spit?
The love that said forever, forever
and then runs you over like a truck?
Are you a prayer that floats into a radio advertisement?
Despair,
I don’t like you very well.
You don’t suit my clothes or my cigarettes.
Why do you locate here
as large as a tank,
aiming at one half of a lifetime?
Couldn’t you just go float into a tree
instead of locating here at my roots,
forcing me out of the life I’ve led
when it’s been my belly so long?

All right!
I’ll take you along on the trip
where for so many years
my arms have been speechless

—Anne Sexton (1928-1974)

Her Kind

I have gone out, a possessed witch, 
haunting the black air, braver at night; 
dreaming evil, I have done my hitch 
over the plain houses, light by light: 
lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. 
A woman like that is not a woman, quite. 
I have been her kind. 

I have found the warm caves in the woods, 
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves, 
closets, silks, innumerable goods; 
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves: 
whining, rearranging the disaligned. 
A woman like that is misunderstood. 
I have been her kind. 

I have ridden in your cart, driver, 
waved my nude arms at villages going by, 
learning the last bright routes, survivor 
where your flames still bite my thigh 
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. 
A woman like that is not ashamed to die. 
I have been her kind. 

-Anne Sexton

The Truth the Dead Know

Gone, I say and walk from church,
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
It is June.  I am tired of being brave.

We drive to the Cape.  I cultivate
myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
where the sea swings in like an iron gate
and we touch.  In another country people die.

My darling, the wind falls in like stones
from the whitehearted water and when we touch
we enter touch entirely.  No one’s alone.
Men kill for this, or for as much.

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 Sexton

I always found this poem particularly touching.  Ms. Sexton wrote it for her parents, who died within a few months of each other in 1959.  It makes the “I am tired of being brave” line that much more touching.

Just Once

Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hoarded these constants into morning 
only to find them gone.

-Anne Sexton

This is one of my all-time favorites.  “All neoned and strobe-hearted” is the best description of that something you just can’t quite put your finger on…

Music Swims Back To Me

Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.

Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I liked it and danced in a circle.
Music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better;
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November;
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.

They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way,
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la,
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
and was not afraid.
Mister?

-Anne Sexton