Desultory Discourse

You said the anger would come back
just as the love did.

I have a black look I do not
like. It is a mask I try on.
I migrate toward it and its frog
sits on my lips and defecates.
It is old. It is also a pauper.
I have tried to keep it on a diet.
I give it no unction.

There is a good look that I wear
like a blood clot. I have
sewn it over my left breast.
I have made a vocation of it.
Lust has taken plant in it
and I have placed you and your
child at its milk tip.

Oh the blackness is murderous
and the milk tip is brimming
and each machine is working
and I will kiss you when
I cut up one dozen new men
and you will die somewhat,
again and again.

- Anne Sexton

All Hallows Eve — when ghosts do walk the earth:
All Hallows Eve — O light and fireside mirth!
Ah, leave the gay revel and the merry din,
Set the door upon the latch and let the ghosts in.

There comes no dream-lover stepping from the lane,
No pitiful white creature a-beating at the pane:
There is no herb to be gathered nor spell to be said,
And still in the grey graveyard lie the waiting dead.

When the shadows gather, in a room apart,
To the still glow of the firelight, to the dreaming heart,
Far from the loud frolic and the dancers' din,
Friendly out of the gloaming the dear ghosts come —

Come, when the wind wakens like an olden song,
With smiles half-forgotten and voices lost long, —
With a well-beloved footstep lingering at the door,
Hands full of old posies that smell sweet as of yore . . .

All Hallows Eve — when dreams do rule on earth!
All Hallows Eve — O the feasting and the mirth!
Ah, leave the loud laughter and the dance and din,
Set the door upon the latch and let the ghosts in.

Cicely Fox Smith

( An October Evening )

Color floods to the spot, dull purple.
The rest of the body is all washed-out,
The color of pearl.

In a pit of a rock
The sea sucks obsessively,
One hollow the whole sea's pivot.

The size of a fly,
The doom mark
Crawls down the wall.

The heart shuts,
The sea slides back,
The mirrors are sheeted.

Sylvia Plath