A Sexton poem

Every poem's  like that in Sexton's cute smirk
   
 or the two lips pressed to the filter
   
or a hand draped over the only knee left to her
   


 
   

Titi

As a long-gowned leggy dancing master knows,
  "It's Titi and sweet-both,"

smirking, quick to say to dancing girls all in a row.
   But Titi, grown to stray far

has gone too far so that her lord's slender and
    near, saying "Americans

like their virgins!"and meaning every word of it--
   She's not in her quartier.

"All around and through each one of us," she
   admits, "is a type of dance

that will look dear to dancing girls all in a row"
   "Very much!" was his reply
 


 
 

My goodbye to the neighbour's cat

With milk on the chin and feathery lip,
  (uncoiling, to show you)
she mews, & rises misty-nosed, too
  because you'd like
  to say bye

But she turns the tension into a nap,
  into a very 'O':
so I can bear easily the milk on her lip,
  (coiling, to show me)
  when I go

Gary

(1954-1980)

The grass blown over your eyes,

  I saw, soul-shrivelled

in wind, wet in an early Spring,

  an absent heart

(were it just grass borders taking

  you in!),

 and even a

  slight form of a daughterless dad

(were it just in the way the next

  stone took you out),

  & a very wet sunken place

( Gary , not a tree around for

  you either!)

With some watchful sweeping, alone

  alone all the time, I

saw the step, smile & the veiny brow

  returned,

and very shapeless under my

  feet  a

few leaves yet to brush from the eyes,

                              old friend

Gertrude

When it's out of your hands,  and the cute curled face
   of the cat-saint takes one in hers,

look on a bit & wait. The two or three others, breathless
  and tight-lipped (those cats of hers!)

she won't embrace because they are beyond Nevelles fields,
  and beyond me every bit as much--

these, --I pray !--be always yesterday's poor  inexistent
  twitching under her heat

Tabby

She's etched in snow-decal like the panther cousin; and

  lost in a broken field, like the plumehunter

Devislish with fur's soft-fire, foxed,
  hourly, in even bouts a cat walks out of her rubble-lair to
taste yardbrush and its  fancy dish

Tabby's part chisel-toothed, part tiger tongs
  with eye-grease
(fecund feet mounting on rocks)

  A faint brocade beautifully grains evenly at the throat,
the very softness a symbol
  from round  the nape and down the central arch--

the cushy patron-saint of the somnambulist!

  If ticklish as a mushroom's dewy underbelly
she's also watchful as an ear of the sea

  She's also marathon-prowler

because with all the momentary glaring sun-reveille,
  transparent grass mists
and footfalls seen across a frictionless,crabbed yard,
  we can hardly spot her at all

clawing on the oak with tusky prescience

  Rains can't wither tails nor alone a tabby's puff-cheeks,
powdery ear, cute crystal-moth nose, too

  And if she's more shrimper than man-eater,
more a whiskery fandango, majorette, than sacred pelf matted
  with odd street-gore--
still for all that the cat prefers guttling prey to just meanly
  boring through

  Tabby's still all egress, a pure window on the world,
assailed by nothing so much as a light rain

  and with feathers in the mouth looks like nothing so
much as some celestial mouser, nestbugger,
  eyes two starry flea-wings,

  gums of moist cooked cheese.

Exempla of the Aged

 

   That Wisdom to know when to rise

is caught in shades, strong-armed by two fleshy feet

   that get up slowly, greet the light.

& hold derisively to the taffrails of a stormy Day

   There's no tabla or tabor but an ear-ringing;

& that ache at temples in cheap palliative out-

   doors where icy pale yellow straw

are beds, not graves.

   Degrading gloss of plastic

   patio seats, too, without flaming horses!

At first glance his face rising lowers towards

   Styrofoam cups; nose & chin moisten

heading for a ground far away from the rails & damp.

   The cheeks are cracked flowerpots.

If anyone sees 'em when he tries to go, it's welcome

   relief from leggy shades round him.

If ever a heavy forearm makes a start, it's rebel angel

   wing of eighty or so that slowly tears him

from his toast.

He may even find there some bold fixity,
   with crumbs on lips & crumpled chin,

and can thank himself for it & "a word with you"
   would be enough.

 But if "no one's

heard me, it's been quiet at least" because "he's wise

   who knows when it's time to rise".