Anne Sexton

Earthworm

Slim inquirer, while the old fathers sleep

you are reworking their soil, you have

a grocery store there down under the earth

and it is well stocked with broken wine bottles,

old cigars, old door knobs and earth,

that great brown flour that you kiss each day.

There are dark stars in the cool evening and

you fondle them like killer birds' beaks.

But what I want to know is why when small boys

dig you up for curiosity and cut you in half

why each half lives and crawls away as if whole.

Have you no beginning and end? Which heart is

the real one? Which eye the seer? Why

is it in the infinite plan that you would

be severed and rise from the dead like a gargoyle

with two heads?