As Nice As A Chocolate Bar

I went to a particular cemetery to photograph the grave of one of my favorite poets, e.e. cummings. Unfortunately his grave does not photograph well in the rain. In a stroke of luck, I found out that Pulitzer Prize winning poet Anne Sexton is also buried in the same cemetery. I thought the rain suited her grave nicely.

Sexton battled mental illness for much of her adult life, and although much of her poetry deals with the darker side of human existence, she could write about the subject in a witty fashion: "Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar."

Finding her grave was certainly a treat for me today.

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A Curse Against Elegies

Oh, love, why do we argue like this?
I am tired of all your pious talk.
Also, I am tired of all the dead.
They refuse to listen,
so leave them alone.
Take your foot out of the graveyard,
they are busy being dead.

Everyone was always to blame:
the last empty fifth of booze,
the rusty nails and chicken feathers
that stuck in the mud on the back doorstep,
the worms that lived under the cat's ear
and the thin-lipped preacher
who refused to call
except once on a flea-ridden day
when he came scuffing in through the yard
looking for a scapegoat.
I hid in the kitchen under the ragbag.

I refuse to remember the dead.
And the dead are bored with the whole thing.
But you - you go ahead,
go on, go on back down
into the graveyard,
lie down where you think their faces are;
talk back to your old bad dreams.

~ Anne Sexton
1928-1974