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Anne Sexton - The Double Image
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	1.

	I am thirty this November.
	You are still small, in your fourth year.
	We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,
	flapping in the winter rain.
	falling flat and washed. And I remember
	mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
	They said I`d never get you back again.
	I tell you what you`ll never really know:
	all the medical hypothesis
	that explained my brain will never be as true as these
	struck leaves letting go.

	I, who chose two times
	to kill myself, had said your nickname
	the mewling mouths when you first came;
	until a fever rattled
	in your throat and I moved like a pantomine
	above your head. Ugly angels spoke to me. The blame,
	I heard them say, was mine. They tattled
	like green witches in my head, letting doom
	leak like a broken faucet;
	as if doom had flooded my belly and filled your bassinet,
	an old debt I must assume.

	Death was simpler than I`d thought.
	The day life made you well and whole
	I let the witches take away my guilty soul.
	I pretended I was dead
	until the white men pumped the poison out,
	putting me armless and washed through the rigamarole
	of talking boxes and the electric bed.
	I laughed to see the private iron in that hotel.
	Today the yellow leaves
	go queer. You ask me where they go I say today believed
	in itself, or else it fell.

	Today, my small child, Joyce,
	love your self`s self where it lives.
	There is no special God to refer to; or if there is,
	why did I let you grow
	in another place. You did not know my voice
	when I came back to call. All the superlatives
	of tomorrow`s white tree and mistletoe
	will not help you know the holidays you had to miss.
	The time I did not love
	myself, I visited your shoveled walks; you held my glove.
	There was new snow after this.

	2.

	They sent me letters with news
	of you and I made moccasins that I would never use.
	When I grew well enough to tolerate
	myself, I lived with my mother, the witches said.
	But I didn`t leave. I had my portrait
	done instead.

	Part way back from Bedlam
	I came to my mother`s house in Gloucester,
	Massachusetts. And this is how I came
	to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.
	I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said.
	And she never could. She had my portrait
	done instead.

	I lived like an angry guest,
	like a partly mended thing, an outgrown child.
	I remember my mother did her best.
	She took me to Boston and had my hair restyled.
	Your smile is like your mother`s, the artist said.
	I didn`t seem to care. I had my portrait
	done instead.

	There was a church where I grew up
	with its white cupboards where they locked us up,
	row by row, like puritans or shipmates
	singing together. My father passed the plate.
	Too late to be forgiven now, the witches said.
	I wasn`t exactly forgiven. They had my portrait
	done instead.

	3.

	All that summer sprinklers arched
	over the seaside grass.
	We talked of drought
	while the salt-parched
	field grew sweet again. To help time pass
	I tried to mow the lawn
	and in the morning I had my portrait done,
	holding my smile in place, till it grew formal.
	Once I mailed you a picture of a rabbit
	and a postcard of Motif number one,
	as if it were normal
	to be a mother and be gone.

	They hung my portrait in the chill
	north light, matching
	me to keep me well.
	Only my mother grew ill.
	She turned from me, as if death were catching,
	as if death transferred,
	as if my dying had eaten inside of her.
	That August you were two, but I timed my days with doubt.
	On the first of September she looked at me
	and said I gave her cancer.
	They carved her sweet hills out
	and still I couldn`t answer.

	4.

	That winter she came
	part way back
	from her sterile suite
	of doctors, the seasick
	cruise of the X-ray,
	the cells` arithmetic
	gone wild. Surgery incomplete,
	the fat arm, the prognosis poor, I heard
	them say.

	During the sea blizzards
	she had here
	own portrait painted.
	A cave of mirror
	placed on the south wall;
	matching smile, matching contour.
	And you resembled me; unacquainted
	with my face, you wore it. But you were mine
	after all.

	I wintered in Boston,
	childless bride,
	nothing sweet to spare
	with witches at my side.
	I missed your babyhood,
	tried a second suicide,
	tried the sealed hotel a second year.
	On April Fool you fooled me. We laughed and this
	was good.

	5.

	I checked out for the last time
	on the first of May;
	graduate of the mental cases,
	with my analysts`s okay,
	my complete book of rhymes,
	my typewriter and my suitcases.

	All that summer I learned life
	back into my own
	seven rooms, visited the swan boats,
	the market, answered the phone,
	served cocktails as a wife
	should, made love among my petticoats

	and August tan. And you came each
	weekend. But I lie.
	You seldom came. I just pretended
	you, small piglet, butterfly
	girl with jelly bean cheeks,
	disobedient three, my splendid

	stranger. And I had to learn
	why I would rather
	die than love, how your innocence
	would hurt and how I gather
	guilt like a young intern
	his symptons, his certain evidence.

	That October day we went
	to Gloucester the red hills
	reminded me of the dry red fur fox
	coat I played in as a child; stock still
	like a bear or a tent,
	like a great cave laughing or a red fur fox.

	We drove past the hatchery,
	the hut that sells bait,
	past Pigeon Cove, past the Yacht Club, past Squall`s
	Hill, to the house that waits
	still, on the top of the sea,
	and two portraits hung on the opposite walls.

	6.

	In north light, my smile is held in place,
	the shadow marks my bone.
	What could I have been dreaming as I sat there,
	all of me waiting in the eyes, the zone
	of the smile, the young face,
	the foxes` snare.

	In south light, her smile is held in place,
	her cheeks wilting like a dry
	orchid; my mocking mirror, my overthrown
	love, my first image. She eyes me from that face
	that stony head of death
	I had outgrown.

	The artist caught us at the turning;
	we smiled in our canvas home
	before we chose our foreknown separate ways.
	The dry redfur fox coat was made for burning.
	I rot on the wall, my own
	Dorian Gray.

	And this was the cave of the mirror,
	that double woman who stares
	at herself, as if she were petrified
	in time — two ladies sitting in umber chairs.
	You kissed your grandmother
	and she cried.

	7.

	I could not get you back
	except for weekends. You came
	each time, clutching the picture of a rabbit
	that I had sent you. For the last time I unpack
	your things. We touch from habit.
	The first visit you asked my name.
	Now you will stay for good. I will forget
	how we bumped away from each other like marionettes
	on strings. It wasn`t the same
	as love, letting weekends contain
	us. You scrape your knee. You learn my name,
	wobbling up the sidewalk, calling and crying.
	You can call me mother and I remember my mother again,
	somewhere in greater Boston, dying.

	I remember we named you Joyce
	so we could call you Joy.
	You came like an awkward guest
	that first time, all wrapped and moist
	and strange at my heavy breast.
	I needed you. I didn`t want a boy,
	only a girl, a small milky mouse
	of a girl, already loved, already loud in the house
	of herself. We named you Joy.
	I, who was never quite sure
	about being a girl, needed another
	life, another image to remind me.
	And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure
	or soothe it. I made you to find me.
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