1. <br /> <br />You lay in the nest of your real death, <br />Beyond the print of my nervous fingers <br />Where they touched your moving head; <br />Your old skin puckering, your lungs' breath <br />Grown baby short as you looked up last <br />At my face swinging over the human bed, <br />And somewhere you cried, let me go let me go. <br /> <br />You lay in the crate of your last death, <br />But were not you, not finally you. <br />They have stuffed her cheeks, I said; <br />This clay hand, this mask of Elizabeth <br />Are not true. From within the satin <br />And the suede of this inhuman bed, <br />Something cried, let me go let me go. <br /> <br />2. <br /> <br />They gave me your ash and bony shells, <br />Rattling like gourds in the cardboard urn, <br />Rattling like stones that their oven had blest. <br />I waited you in the cathedral of spells <br />And I waited you in the country of the living, <br />Still with the urn crooned to my breast, <br />When something cried, let me go let me go. <br /> <br />So I threw out your last bony shells <br />And heard me scream for the look of you, <br />Your apple face, the simple creche <br />Of your arms, the August smells <br />Of your skin. Then I sorted your clothes <br />And the loves you had left, Elizabeth, <br />Elizabeth, until you were gone.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/elizabeth-gone/
