Transformations by Anne Sexton

Author:Anne Sexton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504034357
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

ONE-EYE, TWO-EYES, THREE-EYES

Even in the pink crib

the somehow deficient,

the somehow maimed,

are thought to have

a special pipeline to the mystical,

the faint smell of the occult,

a large ear on the God-horn.

Still,

the parents have bizarre thoughts,

thoughts like a skill saw.

They accuse: Your grandfather,

your bad sperm, your evil ovary.

Thinking: The devil has put his finger upon us.

And yet in time

they consult their astrologer

and admire their trophy.

They turn a radish into a ruby.

They plan an elaborate celebration.

They warm to their roles.

They carry it off with a positive fervor.

The bird who cannot fly

is left like a cockroach.

A three-legged kitten is carried

by the scruff of the neck

and dropped into a blind cellar hole.

A malformed foal would not be nursed.

Nature takes care of nature.

I knew a child once

With the mind of a hen.

She was the favored one

for she was as innocent as a snowflake

and was a great lover of music.

She could have been a candidate

for the International Bach Society

but she was only a primitive.

A harmonica would do.

Love grew around her like crabgrass.

Even though she might live to the age of fifty

her mother planned a Mass of the Angels

and wore her martyrdom

like a string of pearls.

The unusual needs to be commented upon …

The Thalidomide babies

with flippers at their shoulders,

wearing their mechanical arms

like derricks.

The club-footed boy

wearing his shoe like a flat iron.

The idiot child,

a stuffed doll who can only masturbate.

The hunchback carrying his hump

like a bag of onions …

Oh how we treasure

their scenic value.

When a child stays needy until he is fifty—

oh mother-eye, oh mother-eye, crush me in—

the parent is as strong as a telephone pole.

Once upon a time

there were three sisters.

One with one eye

like a great blue aggie.

One with two eyes,

common as pennies.

One with three eyes,

the third like an intern.

Their mother loved only One-Eye and Three.

She loved them because they were God’s lie.

And she liked to poke

at the unusual holes in their faces.

Two-Eyes was as ordinary

as an old man with a big belly

and she despised her.

Two-Eyes wore only rags

and ate only scraps from the dog’s dish

and spent her days caring for their goat.

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