Ann Sexton

Anne Sexton’s family


Music Swims Back To Me

Wait Mister. Which way is home? 

They turned the light out 
and the dark is moving in the corner. 
There are no sign posts in this room, 
four ladies, over eighty, 
in diapers every one of them. 
La la la, Oh music swims back to me 
and I can feel the tune they played 
the night they left me 
in this private institution on a hill. 

Imagine it. A radio playing 
and everyone here was crazy. 
I liked it and danced in a circle. 
Music pours over the sense 
and in a funny way 
music sees more than I. 
I mean it remembers better; 
remembers the first night here. 
It was the strangled cold of November; 
even the stars were strapped in the sky 
and that moon too bright 
forking through the bars to stick me 
with a singing in the head. 
I have forgotten all the rest. 

They lock me in this chair at eight a.m. 
and there are no signs to tell the way, 
just the radio beating to itself 
and the song that remembers 
more than I. Oh, la la la, 
this music swims back to me. 
The night I came I danced a circle 
and was not afraid. 
Mister?

John Ashbery

  The New Spirit (excerpt) I thought that if I could put it all down, that would be one way. And next the thought came to me that to leave a...