Courage
By Anne
Sexton
It is in
the small things we see it.
The
child's first step,
as awesome
as an earthquake.
The first
time you rode a bike,
wallowing
up the sidewalk.
The first
spanking when your heart
went on a
journey all alone.
When they
called you crybaby
or poor
or fatty or crazy
and made
you into an alien,
you drank
their acid
and concealed
it.
Later,
if you
faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did
not do it with a banner,
you did
it with only a hat to
comver
your heart.
You did
not fondle the weakness inside you
though it
was there.
Your
courage was a small coal
that you
kept swallowing.
If your
buddy saved you
and died
himself in so doing,
then his
courage was not courage,
it was
love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you
have endured a great despair,
then you
did it alone,
getting a
transfusion from the fire,
picking
the scabs off your heart,
then
wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my
kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave
it a back rub
and then
you covered it with a blanket
and after
it had slept a while
it woke
to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you
face old age and its natural conclusion
your
courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each
spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you
love will live in a fever of love,
and
you'll bargain with the calendar
and at
the last moment
when
death opens the back door
you'll
put on your carpet slippers
and
stride out.
Anne Sexton
(November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet, known for her highly
personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for
her book Live or Die. Themes of her poetry include her long battle against
depression and mania, suicidal tendencies, and various intimate details from her
private life, including her relationships with her husband and children.
Sexton suffered
from severe mental illness for much of her life, her first manic episode taking
place in 1954. After a second episode in 1955 she met Dr. Martin Orne, who
became her long-term therapist at the Glenside Hospital. It was Dr. Orne who
encouraged her to take up poetry
On October 4,
1974, Sexton had lunch with Kumin to revise galleys for Sexton's manuscript of
The Awful Rowing Toward God, scheduled for publication in March 1975
(Middlebrook 396). On returning home she put on her mother's old fur coat,
removed all her rings, poured herself a glass of vodka, locked herself in her
garage, and started the engine of her car, committing suicide by carbon
monoxide poisoning.