Keeping a Book of Centuries
  • welcome
    • About the Book of Centuries
  • in my notebook...
  • shop
  • conversation
    • presentations
  • One Hundred Days
    • Original Invitation

In My Notebook...

In my Commonplace...

6/1/2015

2 Comments

 
The Truth the Dead Know
Anne Sexton, 1928 - 1974
For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959


Gone, I say and walk from church, 
refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
 letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
 It is June. I am tired of being brave. 

 We drive to the Cape. I cultivate 
myself where the sun gutters from the sky, 
where the sea swings in like an iron gate and we touch. 
 In another country people die. 

 My darling, the wind falls in like stones
 from the whitehearted water and when we touch 
we enter touch entirely. No one’s alone. 
Men kill for this, or for as much. 

 And what of the dead? They lie without shoes 
in their stone boats. They are more like stone 
than the sea would be if it stopped. 
 They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.

2 Comments
BONNIE B Buckingham link
6/3/2015 12:27:57 pm

love this sentence: I cultivate myself where the sun gutters from the sky, where the sea swings in like an iron gate and we touch.

Reply
Laurie
6/6/2015 04:18:30 am

It is a beautiful sentence. I have a mental picture of the Cape when I read it. I am glad you commented Bonnie, because I see that the poem is formatted incorrectly here...i will hurry to do justice to Anne Sexton!

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    "Ideas 
    ​won't keep; something must be done about them."

     - Alfred Whitehead

     

    A Charlotte Mason education leads to all kinds of ideas! Join me in keeping one or several of the notebooks she prescribed and discover the Science of Relations and the Art of Mindfulness.

    Picture

    Laurie

    "Perhaps this is one of the secrets of life--to know 'glory' when we see it." 
    --Charlotte Mason

    Virtual Life?

    A wee explanation: this website was created as a way to amplify the daily surprise of seeing glory in one small life.  The notebook entries represented here are all selected from things actually lived and noted on paper in an effort to live the full life British educator Charlotte Mason so ably championed.  ​ 

    In Appreciation
    Photos chosen are linked to their original posts in most cases because I have found something of value there and hope my readers will likewise find a helpful resource.  In the case of miss-attribution or if you desire your work not be linked, please let me know.

    Categories

    All
    Book Of Centuries
    Book Of Firsts
    Church Year
    Commonplace
    Copywork
    Enquire Within
    Fortitude Journal
    Gratitude Journal
    Keeping
    Music Notebook
    Nature Notebook
    Notebooks
    Picture File
    Poetry
    Prayer Journal
    Recipes

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • welcome
    • About the Book of Centuries
  • in my notebook...
  • shop
  • conversation
    • presentations
  • One Hundred Days
    • Original Invitation