Цитаты из книги The Complete Poems

GODS

Mrs. Sexton went out looking for the gods. She began looking in the sky — expecting a large white angel with a blue crotch.

No one.

She looked next in all the learned books and the print spat back at her.

No one.

She made a pilgrimage to the great poet and he belched in her face.

No one.

She prayed in all the churches of the world and learned a great deal about culture. No one.

She went to the Atlantic, the Pacific, for surely God .

No one.

She went to the Buddha, the Brahma, the Pyramids and found immense postcards.

No one.

Then she journeyed back to her own house and the gods of the world were shut in the lavatory.

At last! she cried out, and locked the door.

THE FROG PRINCE

Frau Doktor, Mama Brundig, take out your contacts, remove your wig.

I write for you. I entertain. But frogs come out of the sky like rain.

Frogs arrive With an ugly fury. You are my judge. You are my jury.

My guilts are what we catalogue. I'll take a knife and chop up frog.

Frog has no nerves. Frog is as old as a cockroach. Frog is my father's genitals. Frog is a malformed doorknob. Frog is a soft bag of green.

The moon will not have him. The sun wants to shut off like a light bulb. At the sight of him the stone washes itself in a tub. The crow thinks he's an apple and drops a worm in. At the feel of frog the touch-me-nots explode like electric slugs.

Slime will have him. Slime has made him a house.

Mr. Poison is at my bed. He wants my sausage. He wants my bread.

Mama Brundig, he wants my beer. He wants my Christ for a souvenir.

Frog has boil disease and a bellyful of parasites. He says: Kiss me. Kiss me. And the ground soils itself.

Why should a certain quite adorable princess be walking in her garden at such a time and toss her golden ball up like a bubble and drop it into the well? It was ordained. Just as the fates deal out the plague with a tarot card. Just as the Supreme Being drills holes in our skulls to let the Boston Symphony through.

But I digress. A loss has taken place. The ball has sunk like a cast-iron pot into the bottom of the well.

Lost, she said, my moon, my butter calf, my yellow moth, my Hindu hare. Obviously it was more than a ball. Balls such as these are not for sale in Au Bon Marche. I took the moon, she said, between my teeth and now it is gone and I am lost forever. A thief had robbed by day. Suddenly the well grew thick and boiling and a frog appeared. His eyes bulged like two peas and his body was trussed into place. Do not be afraid, Princess, he said, I am not a vagabond, a cattle farmer, a shepherd, a doorkeeper, a postman or a laborer. I come to you as a tradesman. I have something to sell. Your ball, he said, for just three things. Let me eat from your plate. Let me drink from your cup. Let me sleep in your bed. She thought, Old Waddler, those three you will never do, but she made the promises with hopes for her ball once more. He brought it up in his mouth like a tricky old dog and she ran back to the castle leaving the frog quite alone.

That evening at dinner time a knock was heard at the castle door and a voice demanded: King's youngest daughter, let me in. You promised; now open to me. I have left the skunk cabbage and the eels to live with you. The king then heard of her promise and forced her to comply. The frog first sat on her lap. He was as awful as an undertaker. Next he was at her plate looking over her bacon and calves' liver. We will eat in tandem, he said gleefully. Her fork trembled as if a small machine had entered her. He sat upon the liver and partook like a gourmet. The princess choked as if she were eating a puppy. From her cup he drank. It wasn't exactly hygienic. From her cup she drank as if it were Socrates' hemlock.

Next came the bed. The silky royal bed. Ah! The penultimate hour! There was the pillow with the princess breathing and there was the sinuous frog riding up and down beside her. I have been lost in a river of shut doors, he said, and I have made my way over the wet stones to live with you. She woke up aghast. I suffer for birds and fireflies but not frogs, she said, and threw him across the room. Kaboom! Like a genie coming out of a samovar, a handsome prince arose in the corner of her royal bedroom. He had kind eyes and hands and was a friend of sorrow. Thus they were married. After all he had compromised her.

He hired a night watchman so that no one could enter the chamber and he had the well boarded over so that never again would she lose her ball, that moon, that Krishna hair, that blind poppy, that innocent globe, that madonna womb.

THE AUTHOR OF THE JESUS PAPERS SPEAKS

In my dream I milked a cow, the terrible udder like a great rubber lily sweated in my fingers and as I yanked, waiting for the moon juice, waiting for the white mother, blood spurted from it and covered me with shame. Then God spoke to me and said: People say only good things about Christmas. If they want to say something bad, they whisper. So I went to the well and drew a baby out of the hollow water. Then God spoke to me and said: Here. Take this gingerbread lady and put her in your oven. When the cow gives blood and the Christ is born we must all eat sacrifices. We must all eat beautiful women.

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

Linda, you are leaving your old body now. It lies flat, an old butterfly, all arm, all leg, all wing, loose as an old dress. I reach out toward it but my fingers turn to cankers and I am motherwarm and used, just as your childhood is used. Question you about this and you hold up pearls. Question you about this and you pass by armies. Question you about this — you with your big clock going, its hands wider than jackstraws — and you'll sew up a continent.

Now that you are eighteen I give you my booty, my spoils, my Mother & Co. and my ailments. Question you about this and you'll not know the answer — the muzzle at the mouth, the hopeful tent of oxygen, the tubes, the pathways, the war and the war's vomit. Keep on, keep on, keep on, carrying keepsakes to the boys, carrying powders to the boys, carrying, my Linda, blood to the bloodletter.

Linda, you are leaving your old body now. You've picked my pocket clean and you've racked up all my poker chips and left me empty and, as the river between us narrows, you do calisthenics, that womanly leggy semaphore. Question you about this and you will sew me a shroud and hold up Monday's broiler and thumb out the chicken gut. Question you about this and you will see my death drooling at these gray lips while you, my burglar, will eat fruit and pass the time of day.

ANNA WHO WAS MAD Anna who was mad, I have a knife in my armpit. When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages. Am I some sort of infection? Did I make you go insane? Did I make the sounds go sour? Did I tell you to climb out the window? Forgive. Forgive. Say not I did. Say not. Say.

Speak Mary-words into our pillow. Take me the gangling twelve-year-old into your sunken lap. Whisper like a buttercup. Eat me. Eat me up like cream pudding. Take me in. Take me. Take.

Give me a report on the condition of my soul. Give me a complete statement of my actions. Hand me a jack-in-the-pulpit and let me listen in. Put me in the stirrups and bring a tour group through. Number my sins on the grocery list and let me buy. Did I make you go insane? Did I turn up your earphone and let a siren drive through? Did I open the door for the mustached psychiatrist who dragged you out like a golf cart? Did I make you go insane? From the grave write me, Anna! You are nothing but ashes but nevertheless pick up the Parker Pen I gave you. Write me. Write.

THE HEX

Every time I get happy the Nana-hex comes through. Birds turn into plumber's tools, a sonnet turns into a dirty joke, a wind turns into a tracheotomy, a boat turns into a corpse, a ribbon turns into a noose, all for the Nana-song, sour notes calling out in her madness: You did it. You are the evil. I was thirteen, her awkward namesake, our eyes an identical green. There is no news in it except every time I say: I feel great or Life is marvelous or I just wrote a poem, the heartbeat, the numb hand, the eyes going black from the outer edges, the xylophone in the ears and the voice, the voice, the Nana-hex. My eyes stutter. I am blind.

Sitting on the stairs at thirteen, hands fixed over my ears, the Hitler-mouth psychiatrist climbing past me like an undertaker, and the old woman's shriek of fear: You did it. You are the evil. It was the day meant for me. Thirteen for your whole life, just the masks keep changing. Blood in my mouth, a fish flopping in my chest and doom stamping its little feet. You did it. You are the evil. She's long gone. She went out on the death train. But someone is in the shooting gallery biding her time. The dead take aim. I feel great! Life is marvelous! and yet bull's eye, the hex.

It's all a matter of history. Brandy is no solace. Librium only lies me down like a dead snow queen. Yes! I am still the criminal. Yes! Take me to the station house. But book my double.

THE ONE-LEGGED MAN

Once there was blood as in a murder but now there is nothing.

Once there was a shoe, brown cordovan, which I tied and it did me well. Now I have given away my leg to be brought up beside orphans. I have planted my leg beside the drowned mole with his fifth pink hand sewn onto his mouth. I have shipped off my leg so that it may sink slowly like grit into the Atlantic. I have jettisoned my leg so that it may fall out of the sky like immense lumber. I have eaten my leg so that it may be spit out like a fingernail.

Yet all along . . . Yes, all along, I keep thinking that what I need to do is buy my leg back. Surely it is for sale somewhere, poor broken tool, poor ornament. It might be in a store somewhere beside a lady's scarf. I want to write it letters. I want to feed it supper. I want to carve a bowstring out of it. I want to hold it at noon in my bed and stroke it slowly like a perfect woman.

Lady, lady, why have you left me?

I did not mean to frighten her. I wanted only to watch her quietly as she worked.