With Mercy for the Greedy

With Mercy for the Greedy

BY ANNE SEXTON

Concerning your letter in which you ask   

me to call a priest and in which you ask   

me to wear The Cross that you enclose;   

your own cross,

your dog-bitten cross,

no larger than a thumb,

small and wooden, no thorns, this rose—

I pray to its shadow,

that gray place

where it lies on your letter ... deep, deep.

I detest my sins and I try to believe

in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,   

its solid neck, its brown sleep.

True. There is

a beautiful Jesus.

He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.

How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!

How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!   

But I can't. Need is not quite belief.

All morning long   

I have worn

your cross, hung with package string around my throat.   

It tapped me lightly as a child's heart might,

tapping secondhand, softly waiting to be born.   

Ruth, I cherish the letter you wrote.

My friend, my friend, I was born   

doing reference work in sin, and born   

confessing it. This is what poems are:   

with mercy

for the greedy,

they are the tongue's wrangle,

the world's pottage, the rat's star.