Anne Sexton Poems

By the first of August
the invisible beetles began
to snore and the grass was
as tough as hemp and was
...

Over stone walls and barns,
miles from the black-eyed Susans,
over circus tents and moon rockets
...

I am the love killer,
I am murdering the music we thought so special,
that blazed between us, over and over.
...

for Sylvia Plath

O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
...

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
...

My doctor, the comedian
I called you every time
and made you laugh yourself
when I wrote this silly rhyme...
...

They work with herbs
and penicillin
They work with gentleness
...

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

Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating all my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
...

Better,
despite the worms talking to
the mare’s hoof in the field;
better,
...