Cut-Up, Bruised Need

With Mercy for the Greedy

Anne Sexton

For my friend, Ruth, 

who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confession

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.




Look how she rhymes so subtly you barely notice it: throat/might/wrote; deep/believe/sleep. It's the light touches that make it count. Has there ever been a lovelier poem that refused to accept something beautiful?


There's some quiet wisdom here, too: "Need is not quite belief." I have to agree. But there does seem to be a correlation. Dostoevsky famously wrote, "If I had to choose between Christ and truth, I should choose to stay with Christ rather than with the truth." That's not just conviction and firm faith. That's pathological desire, cut-up and bruised need for what faith gives that you lack. 


Sometimes I think I'm working my way up to it. Sometimes I think I'm working my way out of it.