Anne Sexton Poems

Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
...

You, Doctor Martin, walk
from breakfast to madness. Late August,
I speed through the antiseptic tunnel
...

Everything here is yellow and green.
Listen to its throat, its earthskin,
the bone dry voices of the peepers
...

Big heart,
wide as a watermelon,
but wise as birth,
there is so much abundance
...

So it has come to this
insomnia at 3:15 A.M.,
the clock tolling its engine
...

They sit in a row
outside the kindergarten,
black, red, brown, all
with those brass buckles.
...

It is snowing and death bugs me
as stubborn as insomnia.
The fierce bubbles of chalk,
the little white lesions
...

My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things;
...

1. Old Man

Old man, it's four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly bigger than your bed.
...

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