Reasonable, reasonable, reasonable…we walked through <br />ten different homes, they always call them homes, <br />to find one ward where they like the babies who <br />looks like you. Each time, the eyes that no one owns <br />watched us intently, these visitors from the street <br />that moves outside. They watched, but did not know <br />about time, there in the house where babies never grow. <br />My boy, though innocent and mild <br />your brain is obsolete. <br />Those six times that you almost died <br />the newest medicine and the family fuss <br />pulled you back again. Supplied <br />with air, against my guilty wish, <br />your clogged pipes cried <br />like Lazarus. <br /> <br />At first your mother said…why me! why me! <br />But she got over that. Now she enjoys <br />her dull daily care and her hectic bravery. <br />You do not love anyone. She is not growing a boy; <br />she is enlarging a stone to wear around her neck. <br />Some nights in our bed her mouth snores at me coldly <br />or when she turns, her kisses walking out of the sea, <br />I think of the bad stories, <br />the monster and the wreck. <br />I think of that Scandinavian tale <br />that tells of the king who killed nine <br />sons in turn. Slaughtered wholesale, <br />they had one life in common <br />as you have mine, <br />my son.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-hangman-2/
