Elizabeth Gone
Anne Sexton


1.
You lay in the nest of your real death,
Beyond the print of my nervous fingers
Where they touched your moving head;
Your old skin puckering, your lungs' breath
Grown baby short as you looked up last
At my face swinging over the human bed,
And somewhere you cried, let me go let me go.

You lay in the crate of your last death,
But were not you, not finally you.
They have stuffed her cheeks, I said;
This clay hand, this mask of Elizabeth
Are not true. From within the satin
And the suede of this inhuman bed,
Something cried, let me go let me go.


2.
They gave me your ash and bony shells,
Rattling like gourds in the cardboard urn,
Rattling like stones that their oven had blest.
I waited you in the cathedral of spells
And I waited you in the country of the living,
Still with the urn crooned to my breast,
When something cried, let me go let me go.

So I threw out your last bony shells
And heard me scream for the look of you,
Your apple face, the simple creche
Of your arms, the August smells
Of your skin. Then I sorted your clothes
And the loves you had left, Elizabeth,
Elizabeth, until you were gone.

A Curse Against Elegies
Anne Sexton

Oh, love, why do we argue like this?
I am tired of all your pious talk.
Also, I am tired of all the dead.
They refuse to listen,
so leave them alone.
Take your foot out of the graveyard,
they are busy being dead.

Everyone was always to blame:
the last empty fifth of booze,
the rusty nails and chicken feathers
that stuck in the mud on the back doorstep,
the worms that lived under the cat's ear
and the thin-lipped preacher
who refused to call
except once on a flea-ridden day
when he came scuffing in through the yard
looking for a scapegoat.
I hid in the kitchen under the ragbag.

I refuse to remember the dead.
And the dead are bored with the whole thing.
But you -- you go ahead,
go on, go on back down
into the graveyard,
lie down where you think their faces are;
talk back to your old bad dreams.

Time

keeps on slipping slipping slipping
into the future

Ti-i-i-ime

is on my side,
yes it is

No time left for you
On my way to better things
No time left for you
I found myself some wings
No time left for you
Distant roads are calling me
No time left for you, no time no time no time

*

I am inundated with time. At a time in my life
that I cannot fully appreciate such a thing.

Until October 2006, I had been working full time
and going to school part time through most of those
20 years. I had also been raising a family and cooking
and renovating and planting and cleaning and partying
and playing and singing and dancing and going to weddings
and funerals and the hospital and birthday bashes
and vacations and putting off things I did not have time to do.

Yes, I was having some fun, but I was also always
cognizant of the simple fact that if I took the time
to do one thing, then I would not have the time
to do another and would just add more stress
to my life.


Oh--there is that word-- stress. Oh how we think we know
it! And oh how we do. We do know it. We do. We just
know the direction our life goes as we follow this course
of events. We know. Why decide we know nothing
about what it is to really know stress? Why do I write
in the collective? Why am I thinking about Alan Watts--
drinker that he was--Taoist and intuitive but plagued
with all the insecurites many of us feel.

I can't spell.



Now, I have the time, but I don't have the energy
or the will or the money or the inclination to do
all the things I have put off doing.

Not put off doing as in I will do these in my retirement.
Just put off because I was tired by the TIME I got home
on any given day and just wanted to relax. To unwind. To not
think about all the things I had to do or needed to do.

*

I am up late. I've been going to bed around 9 or so.
I am inundated as well with tv and books.
Imus and Darfur and Iraq and Hip-hop and death
and the scratching of heads. Food shows and home
renovation shows. Biographies and movies. Animal
Planet and Discovery. News networks and (oh god)
even talk shows now and then. Time has permitted
such atrocities.

Not to say I haven't learned a trick or two for the evening
meal or the garden. Good things to know. Good things
when one has more time on ones hands.

Not to say I haven't learned more
about Hitler and Stalin. Things that I wish
I didn't know. Things that just elaborated on the already
horrific things I knew.

Not to say I haven't seen more
of the beautiful work of Kahlo and Wright and Evans
and Matisse. Things that make me hungry for more.
That make me want to take more road trips
to museums and galleries. Things I have time
for but no money to do.

Not to say I haven't listened to more
Dylan and Reed and REM and Lucinda.
I have already invested my money in these
things. These people. Their work. Why did
I not play them more before when I was cooking
dinner or cleaning the house.

Or did I and I just can't remember?

Time. It has this way of altering perception.
Or we have the way. Time is just a human device.


And we are so hung up on things like time.

Like I am thinking now it is after 10. Past my bed
time, which used to be my wake up and greet the world time.

Time for another glass of merlot. Cheap merlot at that.

This Evening Sky

The birds aren't leaving. They are flirting,
swooping in grandiose dives and swirls, circling
and harassing one another. They are nesting,

they are love-making. And in all
that grandiosity, my Molly, my bird-
dog, red-baby Irish setter Molly,
takes wingless, full-throttle flight

herself across the backyard, never
getting close to trapping one, much less
savoring the feast of the forbidden. She stops

when one lights in the magnolia, knowing
what she savors is far from her reach.
I relinquish my hold on the leash, know
she's perplexed and not apt to run from me.

We stand there, two solitary animals, thinking
about the one that got away, wondering
about the ones that stay. I say this with certainty

as she is no ordinary dog. Today, she pissed
on my comforter--her hallelujah--her right
to be here. Her this bed is the forbidden
song. She spent some time outside after that,

tethered to her tie-out, her red fur gleaming
in the early April light. We all want to own
something--some spot, some place we can claim

as our own, a place reserved for others that our flesh
and bone never get to inhabit, an evening sunset
we know others have as much right to witness.
And all the while, birds flutter above and wing

themselves relentlessly into a blinding blue.

Sandy Denny - Who Knows Where the Time Goes - Demo recording

Laurel,

I listened to the Queen song and it brought me here to Sandy Denny. When I go visit my friend in Lexington, she plays this on the piano and I sing (or we both sing). I like this version, but I love the cover with Fairport Convention (couldn't find it here).

Bad day today. Cried all day, but I am not going to beat up on myself about it.

Friend, thank you. For believing in me. Though we have never laid eyes on one another, we have shared so much.

Thank you. Thank you.
M

Under Cover

Last night, before dark,
I went outside and covered
the wisteria and garden phlox
with my moon and star flannel sheets,

but to no avail. This morning, the wisteria
buds sagged like old breasts, though they were small
and so seemingly ripe. The phlox leaves, unfettered
and unfurled, had turned inside of themselves as if

ashamed. Even the clematis, whose tendrils had attached
themselves tightly to the faux wood trellis, were drooping
and seemingly disinterested in the whole shenanigan.
So I disrobed them completely and finally before noon,

with the realization that my small amount of effort
mattered not at all, and that even the best efforts one can make
are at the whim of something larger than oneself. I won't
cover them tonight. I'll let the natural course of living take

its place, let the south reclaim everything to gravity,
as it' s prone to do, cover my own sagging, weathered
body tighter tonight, some simple ruse to soothe
my own misgivings.

From my son's room comes the sound
of my youth, so long gone now:


Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang her name on you
when you change with every new day
still I'm gonna miss you

What do I miss?

What I never knew
as much as what I knew.

The boys whose kisses created warmth
where there had been none before, the girls
who laughed and cried with me, the grandmother
who taught me to chain one and loop two
(or something like that), the father who taught
me how to parallel park in his old brown caddy.

This afternoon, in the cold that decided
to revisit this town, I sat in the sun
and crushed buttercups. Not because


Enough.