Saturday, August 19, 2006

today, just because


you agree, right? some of these lines should be screaming red.

Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind,
in the commonplaces of the asylum
where the cracked mirror or my own selfish death
outstared me. And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside of myself,
you would not know that the worst of anyone can be,
finally, an accident of hope.
I tapped my own head;it was a glass,
an inverted bowl.It is a small thing
to rage in your own bowl.
At first it was private.
Then it was more than myself;
it was you, or your house
or your kitchen.
And if you turn away
because there is no lesson here
I will hold my awkward bowl,
with all its cracked stars shining
like a complicated lie,and fasten a new skin around it
as if I were dressing an orange or a strange sun.
Not that it was beautiful,but that I found some order there.
There ought to be something special
for someone
in this kind of hope.
This is something I would never find
in a lovelier place, my dear,although your fear is anyone's fear,
like an invisible veil between us all
and sometimes in private,
my kitchen, your kitchen,
my face, your face. - For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further, Anne Sexton

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