Home ⇒ 📌Anne Sexton ⇒ Gods
Gods
Ms. Sexton went out looking for the gods.
She began looking in the sky
-expecting a large white angel with a blue crotch.
No one.
She looked next in all the learned books
And the print spat back at her.
No one
She made a pilgrimage to the great poet
And he belched in her face.
No one.
She prayed in all the churches of the world
And learned a great deal about culture.
No one.
She went to the Atlantic, the Pacific, for surely God…
No one.
She went to the Buddha, the Brahma, the Pyramids
And found immense postcards.
No one.
Then she journeyed back to her own house
And the gods of the world were shut in the lavatory.
At last!
She cried out,
And locked the door.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)Related poetry:
- The Gods of the Copybook Headings 1919 As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, Make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place. ‘eering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all. Ne were living in trees when they met us. They showed […]...
- A Brief History of Gods First, we worshipped the inanimate. Next, we learned to worship the gods Later, we discovered the Deity. Then, dazzled by our own Reason We returned to the inanimate And ended up worshipping anything, From football to economic growth....
- Manufactured Gods THEY put up big wooden gods. Then they burned the big wooden gods And put up brass gods and Changing their minds suddenly Knocked down the brass gods and put up A doughface god with gold earrings. The poor mutts, the pathetic slant heads, They didn’t know a little tin god Is as good as […]...
- Gods 1 THOUGHT of the Infinite-the All! Be thou my God. 2 Lover Divine, and Perfect Comrade! Waiting, content, invisible yet, but certain, Be thou my God. 3 Thou-thou, the Ideal Man! Fair, able, beautiful, content, and loving, Complete in Body, and dilate in Spirit, Be thou my God. 4 O Death-(for Life has served its […]...
- The Gods! The Gods! People were bathing and posturing themselves on the beach, And all was dreary, great robot limbs, robot breasts, Robot voices, robot even the gay umbrellas. But a woman, shy and alone, was washing herself under a tap and the glimmer of the presence of the gods was like Lilies, and like water-lilies....
- Evarra And His Gods Read here: This is the story of Evarra man Maker of Gods in lands beyond the sea. Because the city gave him of her gold, Because the caravans brought turquoises, Because his life was sheltered by the King, So that no man should maim him, none should steal, Or break his rest with babble in […]...
- Sonnet XXXII: Blest As the Gods Blest as the Gods! Sicilian Maid is he, The youth whose soul thy yielding graces charm; Who bound, O! thraldom sweet! by beauty’s arm, In idle dalliance fondly sports with thee! Blest as the Gods! that iv’ry throne to see, Throbbing with transports, tender, timid, warm! While round thy fragrant lips zephyrs swarm! As op’ning […]...
- Gods In The Gutter I dreamed I saw three demi-gods who in a cafe sat, And one was small and crapulous, and one was large and fat; And one was eaten up with vice and verminous at that. The first he spoke of secret sins, and gems and perfumes rare; And velvet cats and courtesans voluptuously fair: “Who is […]...
- Indian Song SHADOWY-PETALLED, like the lotus, loom the mountains with their snows: Through the sapphire Soma rising such a flood of glory throws As when first in yellow splendour Brahma from the Lotus rose. High above the darkening mounds where fade the fairy lights of day, All the tiny planet folk are waving us from far away; […]...
- The Gods Of Greece Ye in the age gone by, Who ruled the world a world how lovely then! And guided still the steps of happy men In the light leading-strings of careless joy! Ah, flourished then your service of delight! How different, oh, how different, in the day When thy sweet fanes with many a wreath were bright, […]...
- The False Gods “We are false and evanescent, and aware of our deceit, From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet. You may serve us if you must, and you shall have your wage of ashes,- Though arrears due thereafter may be hard for you to meet. “You may swear that we […]...
- Song of Man XXV I was here from the moment of the Beginning, and here I am still. And I shall remain here until the end Of the world, for there is no Ending to my grief-stricken being. I roamed the infinite sky, and Soared in the ideal world, and Floated through the firmament. But Here I am, prisoner […]...
- It was given to me by the Gods It was given to me by the Gods When I was a little Girl They given us Presents most you know When we are new and small. I kept it in my Hand I never put it down I did not dare to eat or sleep For fear it would be gone I heard such […]...
- Transit of the Gods Strange that the self’s continuum should outlast The Virgin, Aphrodite, and the Mourning Mother, All loves and griefs, successive deities That hold their kingdom in the human breast. Abandoned by the gods, woman with an ageing body That half remembers the Annunciation The passion and the travail and the grief That wore the mask of […]...
- Buddha at Kamakura 1892 “And there is a Japanese idol at Kamakura” Oye who treated the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day, Be gentle when “the heathen” pray To Buddha at Kamakura! To him the Way, the Law, apart, Whom Maya held beneath her heart, Ananda’s Lord, the Bodhisat, The Buddha of Kamakura. For though he neither […]...
- The Eye The Atlantic is a stormy moat; and the Mediterranean, The blue pool in the old garden, More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice Of ships and blood, and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific Our ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant. Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs Nor any future […]...
- You Gote-heard Gods Strephon. You Gote-heard Gods, that loue the grassie mountaines, You Nimphes that haunt the springs in pleasant vallies, You Satyrs ioyde with free and quiet forests, Vouchsafe your silent eares to playning musique, Which to my woes giues still an early morning; And drawes the dolor on till wery euening. Klaius. O Mercurie, foregoer to […]...
- The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos The wide Pacific waters And the Atlantic meet. With cries of joy they mingle, In tides of love they greet. Above the drowned ages A wind of wooing blows: – The red rose woos the lotos, The lotos woos the rose. . . The lotos conquered Egypt. The rose was loved in Rome. Great India […]...
- The Little Box The little box gets her first teeth And her little length Little width little emptiness And all the rest she has The little box continues growing The cupboard that she was inside Is now inside her And she grows bigger bigger bigger Now the room is inside her And the house and the city and […]...
- One Of Their Gods When one of them passed through the market place Of Seleucia, toward the hour that night falls As a tall and perfectly handsome youth, With the joy of immortality in his eyes, With his scented black hair, The passers-by would stare at him And one would ask the other if he knew him, And if […]...
- To A Buddha Seated On A Lotus LORD BUDDHA, on thy Lotus-throne, With praying eyes and hands elate, What mystic rapture dost thou own, Immutable and ultimate? What peace, unravished of our ken, Annihilate from the world of men? The wind of change for ever blows Across the tumult of our way, To-morrow’s unborn griefs depose The sorrows of our yesterday. Dream […]...
- WHO'LL BUY GODS OF LOVE? OF all the beauteous wares Exposed for sale at fairs, None will give more delight Than those that to your sight From distant lands we bring. Oh, hark to what we sing! These beauteous birds behold, They’re brought here to be sold. And first the big one see, So full of roguish glee! With light […]...
- The Nile It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream, And times and things, as in that vision, seem Keeping along it their eternal stands, Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme Of high Sesostris, and that southern beam, The […]...
- Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
- Life All in the dark we grope along, And if we go amiss We learn at least which path is wrong, And there is gain in this. We do not always win the race, By only running right, We have to tread the mountain’s base Before we reach its height. The Christs alone no errors made; […]...
- The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
- Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
- Now I sit here on the 2nd floor Hunched over in yellow Pajamas Still pretending to be A writer. Some damned gall, At 71, My brain cells eaten Away by Life. Rows of books Behind me, I scratch my thinning Hair And search for the Word. For decades now I have infuriated the Ladies, The critics, […]...
- If It Is True What the Prophets Write If it is true, what the Prophets write, That the heathen gods are all stocks and stones, Shall we, for the sake of being polite, Feed them with the juice of our marrow-bones? And if Bezaleel and Aholiab drew What the finger of God pointed to their view, Shall we suffer the Roman and Grecian […]...
- The Learner I’ve learned Of all the friends I’ve won Dame Nature is the best, And to her like a child I run Craving her mother breast To comfort me in soul distress, And in green glade to find Far from the world’s unloveliness Pure peace of mind. I’ve learned the worth of simple ways, And though […]...
- A Child of the Snows There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim, And never before or again, When the nights are strong with a darkness long, And the dark is alive with rain. Never we know but in sleet and in snow, The place where the great fires are, That the midst of the earth is a […]...
- Unsolved Amid my books I lived the hurrying years, Disdaining kinship with my fellow man; Alike to me were human smiles and tears, I cared not whither Earth’s great life-stream ran, Till as I knelt before my mouldered shrine, God made me look into a woman’s eyes; And I, who thought all earthly wisdom mine, Knew […]...
- Baltic Fog Notes (Bergen)SEVEN days all fog, all mist, and the turbines pounding through high seas. I was a plaything, a rat’s neck in the teeth of a scuffling mastiff. Fog and fog and no stars, sun, moon. Then an afternoon in fjords, low-lying lands scrawled in granite languages on a gray sky, A night harbor, blue dusk […]...
- John Horace Burleson I won the prize essay at school Here in the village, And published a novel before I was twenty-five. I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art; There married the banker’s daughter, And later became president of the bank- Always looking forward to some leisure To write an epic novel of […]...
- "I Love You Sweatheart" A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
- Sestina Of The Tramp-Royal Speakin’ in general, I’ave tried ’em all The ‘appy roads that take you o’er the world. Speakin’ in general, I’ave found them good For such as cannot use one bed too long, But must get ‘ence, the same as I’ave done, An’ go observin’ matters till they die. What do it matter where or ‘ow […]...
- For Johnny Pole On The Forgotten Beach In his tenth July some instinct Taught him to arm the waiting wave, A giant where its mouth hung open. He rode on the lip that buoyed him there And buckled him under. The beach was strung With children paddling their ages in, Under the glare od noon chipping Its light out. He stood up, […]...
- Crossing The Atlantic We sail out of season into on oyster-gray wind, Over a terrible hardness. Where Dickens crossed with mal de mer In twenty weeks or twenty days I cross toward him in five. Wraped in robes Not like Caesar but like liver with bacon I rest on the stern Burning my mouth with a wind-hot ash, […]...
- Conceit It is conceit that kills us And makes us cowards instead of gods. Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal! We have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important, fatally entangled in the Laocoцn coils of our conceit. Now we have to admit we can’t know ourselves, we can only know about […]...
- Africa The sun sought thy dim bed and brought forth light, The sciences were sucklings at thy breast; When all the world was young in pregnant night Thy slaves toiled at thy monumental best. Thou ancient treasure-land, thou modern prize, New peoples marvel at thy pyramids! The years roll on, thy sphinx of riddle eyes Watches […]...