Sing me a thrush, bone. <br />Sing me a nest of cup and pestle. <br />Sing me a sweetbread fr an old grandfather. <br />Sing me a foot and a doorknob, for you are my love. <br />Oh sing, bone bag man, sing. <br />Your head is what I remember that August <br />you were in love with another woman but <br />that didn't matter. I was the guy of your <br />bones, your fingers long and nubby, your <br />forehead a beacon, bare as marble and I worried <br />you like an odor because you had not quite forgotten, <br />bone bag man, garlic in the North End, <br />the book you dedicated, naked as a fish, <br />naked as someone drowning into his own mouth. <br />I wonder, Mr. Bone man, what you're thinking <br />of your fury now, gone sour as a sinking whale, <br />crawling up the alphabet on her own bones. <br />Am I in your ear still singing songs in the rain, <br />me of the death rattle, me of the magnolias, <br />me of the sawdust tavern at the city's edge. <br />Women have lovely bones, arms, neck, thigh <br />and I admire them also, but your bones <br />supersede loveliness. They are the tough <br />ones that get broken and reset. I just can't <br />answer for you, only for your bones, <br />round rulers, round nudgers, round poles, <br />numb nubkins, the sword of sugar. <br />I feel the skull, Mr. Skeleton, living its <br />own life in its own skin.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-fury-of-beautiful-bones/
