Ringing the Bells
And this is the way they ringthe bells in Bedlamand this is the bell-ladywho comes each Tuesday morning to give us a music lessonand because the attendants make you goand because we mind by instinct,like bees caught in the wrong hive,we are the circle of crazy ladieswho sit in the lounge of the mental houseand smile at the smiling womanwho passes us each a bell,who points at my handthat holds my bell,
E flat,and this is the gray dress next to mewho grumbles as if it were specialto be old, to be old,and this is the small hunched squirrel girlon the other side of mewho picks at the hairs over her lip,who picks at the hairs over her lip all day,and this is how the bells really sound,as untroubled and cleanas a workable kitchen,and this is always my bell respondingto my hand that responds to the ladywho points at me,
E flat;and although we are not better for it,they tell you to go.
And you do.
Anne Sexton
Other author posts
The Fury Of Cocks
There they are drooping over the breakfast plates, angel-like, folding in their sad wing, animal sad, and only the night before there they were playing the banjo Once more the day's light comes with its immense sun, its mother trucks, its eng...
Daddy Warbucks
In What's missing is the eyeballsin each of us, but it doesn't matterbecause you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks You let me touch them, fondle the green faceslick at their numbers and it lets you bemy Daddy "...
Sylvias Death
for Sylvia Plath O Sylvia, Sylvia, with a dead box of stones and spoons, with two children, two meteors wandering loose in a tiny playroom, with your mouth into the sheet, into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer, (Sylvia, Sylvia where di...
The Red Dance
There was a girlwho danced in the city that night,that April 22nd,all along the Charles River It was as if one hundred men were watchingor do I mean the one hundred eyes of God The yellow patches in the sycamoresglowed like miniature fla...
