Somebody who should have been born 
is gone. 

Just as the earth puckered its mouth, 
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south. 

Up past the Blue Mountains, where 
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair, 

its roads sunken in like a gray washboard; 
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly, 
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,


Somebody who should have been born
is gone. 

the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break, 
and me wondering how anything fragile survives; 

up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all... 
he took the fullness that love began. 

Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin. 

Somebody who should have been born 
is gone. 

Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant, 
you coward...this baby that I bleed.

Added: on September 30th, 2008 at 3:29 PM | Viewed: 28263 times | Comments (35)

Poet: Anne Sexton (Anne Sexton Art)
Poem: The Abortion
Poem of the Day: May 16 2004

Are you looking for more information on this poem? Perhaps you are trying to analyze it? The poem, The Abortion, has received 35 comments. Click here to read them, and perhaps post a comment of your own. Of course you can also always discuss poems by Anne Sexton with others on the American Poems poetry forum!