Leen stuurt me een gedicht van Anne Sexton. Behalve over de onderwerpen peutertheater en ons vak hadden we ook nog gesproken over het drama van de minnares wier minnaar terug gaat naar de aloude echtgenote. Anne Sexton had daar zo mooi over gedicht, zei Leen. 'Ze mag hem hebben', dacht ik eerst nog aan, qua intertextualiteit, Annie MG, maar dat klopt niet. Dat vers is vanuit het perspectief van de vrouw die haar echtgenoot verliest aan zijn minnares.
For My Lover, Returning to His Wife
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
sat by the potter's wheel at
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.
She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.
I give you back your heart.
I give you permission‹
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound‹
for the burying of her small red wound alive‹
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stockings,
for the garter belt, for the call‹
the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
I wash off.
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