Mother, <br />strange goddess face <br />above my milk home, <br />that delicate asylum, <br />I ate you up. <br />All my need took <br />you down like a meal. <br /> <br />What you gave <br />I remember in a dream: <br />the freckled arms binding me, <br />the laugh somewhere over my woolly hat, <br />the blood fingers tying my shoe, <br />the breasts hanging like two bats <br />and then darting at me, <br />bending me down. <br /> <br />The breasts I knew at midnight <br />beat like the sea in me now. <br />Mother, I put bees in my mouth <br />to keep from eating <br />yet it did no good. <br />In the end they cut off your breasts <br />and milk poured from them <br />into the surgeon's hand <br />and he embraced them. <br />I took them from him <br />and planted them. <br /> <br />I have put a padlock <br />on you, Mother, dear dead human, <br />so that your great bells, <br />those dear white ponies, <br />can go galloping, galloping, <br />wherever you are.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dreaming-the-breasts/
