CAMELOT FANTASIES

— The Truth the Dead Know



by Anne Sexton



For my Mother, born March 1902, died March 1959
 and my Father, born February 1900, died June 1959

 Gone, I say and walk from church,
 refusing the stiff procession to the grave,
 letting the dead ride alone in the hearse.
 It is June. I am tired of being brave.

 We drive to the Cape. I cultivate
 myself where the sun gutters from the sky,
 where the sea swings in like an iron gate
 and we touch. In another country people die.

 My darling, the wind falls in like stones
 from the whitehearted water and when we touch
 we enter touch entirely. No one's alone.
 Men kill for this, or for as much.

 And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
 in the stone boats. They are more like stone
 than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
 to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.