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More poems by Anne SextonAnne Sexton | Print this page.Print | Order a PoetryNotes Analysis of this poem.Analysis | View and Write CommentsComments

Dreaming The Breasts

Anne Sexton

Mother,
strange goddess face
above my milk home,
that delicate asylum,
I ate you up.
All my need took
you down like a meal.

What you gave
I remember in a dream:
the freckled arms binding me,
the laugh somewhere over my woolly hat,
the blood fingers tying my shoe,
the breasts hanging like two bats
and then darting at me,
bending me down.

The breasts I knew at midnight
beat like the sea in me now.
Mother, I put bees in my mouth
to keep from eating
yet it did no good.
In the end they cut off your breasts
and milk poured from them
into the surgeon's hand
and he embraced them.
I took them from him
and planted them.

I have put a padlock
on you, Mother, dear dead human,
so that your great bells,
those dear white ponies,
can go galloping, galloping,
wherever you are.

Added: 31 Aug 2001 | Last Read: 5 Sep 2008 8:17 PM | Viewed: 8408 times

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URL: http://plagiarist.com/poetry/577/ | Viewed on 5 September 2008.
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