Anne Sexton - For John, Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Further lyrics

Not that it was beautiful, but that, in the end, there was a certain sense of order there; something worth learning in that narrow diary of my mind, in the commonplaces of the asylum where the cracked mirror or my own selfish d**h outstared me. And if I tried to give you something else, something outside of myself, you would not know that the worst of anyone can be, finally, an accident of hope. I tapped my own head; it was a gla**, an inverted bowl. It is a small thing to rage in your own bowl. At first it was private. Then it was more than myself; it was you, or your house or your kitchen. And if you turn away because there is no lesson here I will hold my awkward bowl, with all its cracked stars shining like a complicated lie, and fasten a new skin around it as if I were dressing an orange or a strange sun. Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there. There ought to be something special for someone in this kind of hope. This is something I would never find in a lovelier place, my dear, although your fear is anyone's fear, like an invisible veil between us all… and sometimes in private, my kitchen, your kitchen, my face, your face.