17 de junho de 2012

Said The Poet To The Analyst

My business is words. Words are like labels, 
or coins, or better, like swarming bees. 
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; 
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, 
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings. 
I must always forget who one words is able to pick 
out another, to manner another, until I have got 
something I might have said... 
but did not. 
 
Your business is watching my words. But I 
admit nothing. I worth with my best, for instances, 
when I can write my praise for a nickel machine, 
that one night in Nevada: telling how the magic jackpot 
came clacking three bells out, over the lucky screen. 
But if you should say this is something it is not, 
then I grow weak, remembering how my hands felt funny 
and ridiculous and crowded with all 
the believing money.
 
 
Anne Sexton
To Bedlam - And Part Way Back (1960)