Home ⇒ 📌Anne Sexton ⇒ The Fury Of Jewels And Coal
The Fury Of Jewels And Coal
Many a miner has gone
Into the deep pit
To receive the dust of a kiss,
An ore-cell.
He has gone with his lamp
Full of mole eyes
Deep deep and has brought forth
Jesus at Gethsemane.
Body of moss, body of glass,
Body of peat, how sharp
You lie, emerald as heavy
As a golf course, ruby as dark
As an afterbirth,
Diamond as white as sun
On the sea, coal, dark mother,
Brood mother, let the sea birds
Bring you into our lives
As from a distant island,
Heavy as death.
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- I could bring You Jewels had I a mind to I could bring You Jewels had I a mind to But You have enough of those I could bring You Odors from St. Domingo Colors from Vera Cruz Berries of the Bahamas have I But this little Blaze Flickering to itself in the Meadow Suits Me more than those Never a Fellow matched this Topaz […]...
- Poem (The lump of coal my parents teased) The lump of coal my parents teased I’d find in my Christmas stocking Turned out each year to be an orange, For I was their sunshine. Now I have one C. gave me, A dense node of sleeping fire. I keep it where I read and write. “You’re on chummy terms with dread,” It reminds […]...
- Thunderstorms My mind has thunderstorms, That brood for heavy hours: Until they rain me words, My thoughts are drooping flowers And sulking, silent birds. Yet come, dark thunderstorms, And brood your heavy hours; For when you rain me words, My thoughts are dancing flowers And joyful singing birds....
- The Fury Of Sunrises Darkness As black as your eyelid, Poketricks of stars, The yellow mouth, The smell of a stranger, Dawn coming up, Dark blue, No stars, The smell of a love, Warmer now As authenic as soap, Wave after wave Of lightness And the birds in their chains Going mad with throat noises, The birds in their […]...
- The Fury Of Hating Eyes I would like to bury All the hating eyes Under the sand somewhere off The North Atlantic and suffocate Them with the awful sand And put all their colors to sleep In that soft smother. Take the brown eyes of my father, Those gun shots, those mean muds. Bury them. Take the blue eyes of […]...
- The Fury Of Rainstorms The rain drums down like red ants, Each bouncing off my window. The ants are in great pain And they cry out as they hit As if their little legs were only Stitche don and their heads pasted. And oh they bring to mind the grave, So humble, so willing to be beat upon With […]...
- The Fury Of Guitars And Sopranos This singing Is a kind of dying, A kind of birth, A votive candle. I have a dream-mother Who sings with her guitar, Nursing the bedroom With a moonlight and beautiful olives. A flute came too, Joining the five strings, A God finger over the holes. I knew a beautiful woman once Who sang with […]...
- The Coal Picker He perches in the slime, inert, Bedaubed with iridescent dirt. The oil upon the puddles dries To colours like a peacock’s eyes, And half-submerged tomato-cans Shine scaly, as leviathans Oozily crawling through the mud. The ground is here and there bestud With lumps of only part-burned coal. His duty is to glean the whole, To […]...
- The Fury Of Abandonment Someone lives in a cave Eating his toes, I know that much. Someone little lives under a bush Pressing an empty Coca-Cola can against His starving bloated stomac, I know that much. A monkey had his hands cut off For a medical experiment And his claws wept. I know tht much. I know that it […]...
- The Fury Of Flowers And Worms Let the flowers make a journey On Monday so that I can see Ten daisies in a blue vase With perhaps one red ant Crawling to the gold center. A bit of the field on my table, Close to the worms Who struggle blinding, Moving deep into their slime, Moving deep into God’s abdomen, Moving […]...
- 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 engines of amputation. Whereas last night The cock knew its way home, As stiff […]...
- The Fury Of Overshoes They sit in a row Outside the kindergarten, Black, red, brown, all With those brass buckles. Remember when you couldn’t Buckle your own Overshoe Or tie your own Overshoe Or tie your own shoe Or cut your own meat And the tears Running down like mud Because you fell off your Tricycle? Remember, big fish, […]...
- Jewels If I should see your eyes again, I know how far their look would go Back to a morning in the park With sapphire shadows on the snow. Or back to oak trees in the spring When you unloosed my hair and kissed The head that lay against your knees In the leaf shadow’s amethyst. […]...
- The Land of the Exile Mother, the light has grown grey in the sky; I do not know what The time is. There is no fun in my play, so I have come to you. It is Saturday, our holiday. Leave off your work, mother; sit here by the window and tell Me where the desert of Tepantar in the […]...
- The Fury Of God's Goodbye One day He Tipped His top hat And walked Out of the room, Ending the argument. He stomped off Saying: I don’t give guarantees. I was left Quite alone Using up the darkness I rolled up My sweater, Up in a ball, And took it To bed with me, A kind of stand-in For God, […]...
- The Fury Of Cooks Herbs, garlic, Cheese, please let me in! Souffles, salad, Parker House rolls, Please let me in! Cook Helen, Why are you so cross, Why is your kitchen verboten? Couldn’t you just teach me To bake a potato, To bake a potato, That charm, That young prince? No! No! This is my county! You shout silently. […]...
- The Fury Of Sunsets Something Cold is in the air, An aura of ice And phlegm. All day I’ve built A lifetime and now The sun sinks to Undo it. The horizon bleeds And sucks its thumb. The little red thumb Goes out of sight. And I wonder about This lifetime with myself, This dream I’m living. I could […]...
- The Fury Of Sundays Moist, moist, The heat leaking through the hinges, Sun baking the roof like a pie And I and thou and she Eating, working, sweating, Droned up on the heat. The sun as read as the cop car siren. The sun as red as the algebra marks. The sun as red as two electric eyeballs. She […]...
- The Fury Of Earth The day of fire is coming, the thrush, Will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket, The beetle will sink like a giant bulldozer, And at the breaking of the morning the houses Will turn into oil and will in their tides Of fire be a becoming and an ending, a red fan. What then, […]...
- Coal I Is the total black, being spoken From the earth’s inside. There are many kinds of open How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How sound comes into a words, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open like a diamond On glass windows Singing out within the crash of […]...
- At Corfu In seventeen hundred, a much hated sultan Visited us twice, finally Dying of headaches in the south harbor. Ever since, visitors have come to the island. They bring their dogs and children. The ferry boat with a red cross Freshly painted on it Lifts in uneven drafts of smoke and steam Devising the mustard horizon […]...
- Coal Dismembered angel In whose heart the earth is still on fire, The moon still has not been split-off; Here is the message Your long night announces: Everything my eye encompasses this instant: This fire, the cupped-hand, this window With trees and miles of snow beyond it, Even this thought, this poem, Will be compressed Into […]...
- The Fury Of Beautiful Bones Sing me a thrush, bone. Sing me a nest of cup and pestle. Sing me a sweetbread fr an old grandfather. Sing me a foot and a doorknob, for you are my love. Oh sing, bone bag man, sing. Your head is what I remember that Augusty You were in love with another woman but […]...
- What the Coal-Heaver Said The moon’s an open furnace door Where all can see the blast, We shovel in our blackest griefs, Upon that grate are cast Our aching burdens, loves and fears And underneath them wait Paper and tar and pitch and pine Called strife and blood and hate. Out of it all there comes a flame, A […]...
- BALCONY MOTHER of memories, mistress of mistresses, O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire, Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses, The charm of evenings by the gentle fire, Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses! The eves illumined by the burning coal, The balcony where veiled rose-vapour clings How soft your breast was then, how […]...
- The Interpreter Mother of Light, and the Gods! Mother of Music, awake! Silence and speech are at odds; Heaven and Hell are at Stake. By the Rose and the Cross I conjure; I constrain by the Snake and the Sword; I am he that is sworn to endure – Bring us the word of the Lord! By […]...
- Written near a Port on a Dark Evening Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore, Night on the ocean settles dark and mute, Save where is heard the repercussive roar Of drowsy billows on the rugged foot Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone Of seamen in the anchored bark that tell The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone Singing the […]...
- Huge Vapours Brood Above the Clifted Shore Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore, Night o’er the ocean settles, dark and mute, Save where is heard the repercussive roar Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone Of seamen, in the anchored bark, that tell The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone, Singing the […]...
- For Lucy, Who Came First She simply settled down in one piece right where she was, in the sand of a long-vanished lake edge or stream and died. -Donald C. Johanson, paleoanthropologist When I put my hand up to my face I can trace her heavy jawbone and the sockets Of her eyes under my skin. And in the dark […]...
- Nicholas Nye Thistle and darnell and dock grew there, And a bush, in the corner, of may, On the orchard wall I used to sprawl In the blazing heat of the day; Half asleep and half awake, While the birds went twittering by, And nobody there my lone to share But Nicholas Nye. Nicholas Nye was lean […]...
- Mother o' Mine If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose love would follow me still, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine! I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother […]...
- He Remembers Forgotten Beauty When my arms wrap you round I press My heart upon the loveliness That has long faded from the world; The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled In shadowy pools, when armies fled; The love-tales wrought with silken thread By dreaming ladies upon cloth That has made fat the murderous moth; The roses that of […]...
- Now Returned Home Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain Lifts like a mast. There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the year; I noticed most an old shepherd, Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed girl Who […]...
- Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond So heavy Is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, Always it is a surprise When her smoke-colored wings Open And she turns From the thick water, From the black sticks Of the summer pond, And slowly Rises into the air And is gone. Then, not for the first or the last time, I take the deep breath […]...
- I see thee better in the Dark I see thee better in the Dark I do not need a Light The Love of Thee a Prism be Excelling Violet I see thee better for the Years That hunch themselves between The Miner’s Lamp sufficient be To nullify the Mine And in the Grave I see Thee best Its little Panels be Aglow […]...
- PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY I Through my bedroom window The coal carts jolted over the cobbles A slow heavy rhythm full, Light and fast returning empty. The coal office manager was a dwarf With sixty year old skin On a ten year old’s body and Hornrims on a wizened wizard’s face. The enormous shire horses neighed In warning if […]...
- The Veils of Maya MOTHER, with whom our lives should be, Not hatred keeps our lives apart: Charmed by some lesser glow in thee, Our hearts beat not within thy heart. Beauty, the face, the touch, the eyes, Prophets of thee, allure our sight From that unfathomed deep where lies Thine ancient loveliness and light. Self-found at last, the […]...
- My Mother Would Be a Falconress My mother would be a falconress, And I, her gay falcon treading her wrist, Would fly to bring back From the blue of the sky to her, bleeding, a prize, Where I dream in my little hood with many bells Jangling when I’d turn my head. My mother would be a falconress, And she sends […]...
- Who Goes With Fergus? Who will go drive with Fergus now, And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade, And dance upon the level shore? Young man, lift up your russet brow, And lift your tender eyelids, maid, And brood on hopes and fear no more. And no more turn aside and brood Upon love’s bitter mystery; For Fergus rules […]...
- Cinderella Her imaginary playmate was a grown-up In sea-coal satin. The flame-blue glances, The wings gauzy as the membrane that the ashes Draw over an old ember as the mother In a jug of cider were a comfort to her. They sat by the fire and told each other stories. “What men want…” said the godmother […]...