World Poetry Translation Project

Submit Human Translation | Discuss Poem | Post Poetry | Listen McGill Live Cripples And Other Stories by Anne Sexton My doctor, the comedian I called you every time and made you laugh yourself when I wrote this silly rhyme... Each time I give lectures or gather in the grants you send me off to boarding school in training pants. God damn it, father-doctor, I'm really thirty-six. I see dead rats in the toilet. I'm one of the lunatics. Disgusted, mother put me on the potty. She was good at this. My father was fat on scotch. It leaked from every orifice. Oh the enemas of childhood, reeking of outhouses and shame! Yet you rock me in your arms and whisper my nickname. Or else you hold my hand and teach me love too late. And that's the hand of the arm they tried to amputate. Though I was almost seven I was an awful brat. I put it in the Easy Wringer. It came out nice and flat. I was an instant cripple from my finger to my shoulder. The laundress wept and swooned. My mother had to hold her. I know I was a cripple. Of course, I'd known it from the start. My father took the crowbar and broke the wringer's heart. The surgeons shook their heads. They really didn't know-- Would the cripple inside of me be a cripple that would show? My father was a perfect man, clean and rich and fat. My mother was a brilliant thing. She was good at that. You hold me in your arms. How strange that you're so tender! Child-woman that I am, you think that you can mend her. As for the arm, unfortunately it grew. Though mother said a withered arm would put me in Who's Who. For years she has described it. She sang it like a hymn. By then she loved the shrunken thing, my little withered limb. My father's cells clicked each night, intent on making money. And as for my cells, they brooded, little queens, on honey. Oh boys too, as a matter of fact, and cigarettes and cars. Mother frowned at my wasted life. My father smoked cigars. My cheeks blossomed with maggots. I picked at them like pearls. I covered them with pancake. I wound my hair in curls. My father didn't know me but you kiss me in my fever. My mother knew me twice and then I had to leave her. But those are just two stories and I have more to tell from the outhouse, the greenhouse where you draw me out of hell. Father, I am thirty-six, yet I lie here in your crib. I'm getting born again, Adam, as you prod me with your rib. American Review | www.PaperLyon.com | McGill Live Radio | Publish

Translations for this Poem  English  Spanish  French  German  Italian  Portuguese  Korean  Russian  Chinese  Japanese

Poems by Anne Sexton 45 Mercy Street Admonitions To A Special Person After Auschwitz Again And Again And Again And One For My Dame Angels Of The Love Affair Anna Who Was Mad An Obsessive Combination Of Onotologic As It Was Written August 17th August 8th A Curse Against Elegies A Story For Rose On The Midnight Fligh Baby Picture Barefoot Bat Bayonet Briar Rose Sleeping Beauty Buying The Whore Christmas Eve Cigarettes And Whiskey And Wild Wild W Cinderella Clothes Cockroach Consorting With Angels Courage Cripples And Other Stories Crossing The Atlantic Daddy Warbucks Demon Despair Doctors Doors Doors Doors Dreaming The Breasts Earthworm Elegy In The Classroom Elizabeth Gone End Middle Beginning Flee On Your Donkey For God While Sleeping For Johnny Pole On The Forgotten Beach For John Who Begs Me Not To Enquire Fu Frenzy For My Lover Returning To His Wife For The Year Of The Insane Ghosts Gods Going Gone Her Kind Hornet Housewife Hurry Up Please Its Time In Excelsis In The Deep Museum It Is A Spring Afternoon I Remember Just Once Killing The Love Knee Song Lessons In Hunger Live Locked Doors Love Letter Written In A Burning Build Lullaby More Than Myself Mr Mine Music Swims Back To Me My Friend My Friend Noon Walk On The Asylum Lawn Oh Old Portrait Of An Old Woman On The Colleg Raccoon Rapunzel Red Roses Rowing Rumpelstiltskin Said The Poet To The Analyst Small Wire Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs Some Foreign Letters Suicide Note Sylvias Death That Day The Abortion The Addict The Ambition Bird The Angel Food Dogs The Assassin The Bells The Author Of The Jesus Papers Speaks The Balance Wheel The Ballad Of The Lonely Masturbator The Big Boots Of Pain The Big Heart The Black Art The Break The Break Away The Breast The Children The Child Bearers The Civil War The Consecrating Mother The Dead Heart The Death Baby The Death King The Division Of Parts The Doctor Of The Heart The Double Image The Earth The Earth Falls Down The Errand The Evil Eye The Evil Seekers The Exorcists The Expatriates The Fallen Angels The Firebombers The Frog Prince The Fury Of Abandonment The Fury Of Beautiful Bones The Fury Of Cocks The Fury Of Cooks The Fury Of Earth The Fury Of Flowers And Worms The Fury Of Gods Good-bye The Fury Of Gods Goodbye The Fury Of Guitars And Sopranos The Fury Of Hating Eyes The Fury Of Jewels And Coal The Fury Of Overshoes The Fury Of Rainstorms The Fury Of Sundays The Fury Of Sunrises The Fury Of Sunsets The Gold Key The Interrogation Of The Man Of Many H The Inventory Of Goodbye The Kiss The Legend Of The One-Eyed Man The Lost Ingredient The Moss Of His Skin The Nude Swim The Other The Play The Poet Of Ignorance The Red Dance The Room Of My Life The Stand-Ins The Starry Night The Touch The Truth The Dead Know The Twelve Dancing Princesses The Wedding Ring Dance The Wifebeater The Witchs Life To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Tri Unknown Girl In A Maternity Ward Us Wallflower Wanting To Die When Man Enters Woman Where It Was At Back Then With Mercy For The Greedy Words Young You Doctor Martin

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPRSTVWY[ALL]

A.E. Housman	A.R. Ammons	A.S.J. Tessimond
Abraham Cowley	Adam Zagajewski	Adrienne Rich
Ai	Alan Dugan	Alan Seeger
Alden Nowlan	Alexander Pope	Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Noyes	Algernon Swinburne	Alice Duer Miller
Alice Walker	Allen Ginsberg	Amy Clampitt
Amy Lowell	Andrew Marvell	Andrew Paterson
Anna Akhmatova	Anne Bradstreet	Anne Carson
Anne Sexton	Annie Dillard	Anthony Hecht
Antonio Machado	Archibald MacLeish	Arthur Hugh Clough
Audre Lorde	Austin Clarke

Volunteers needed to translate poetry into different languages. Please help us correct the translation of these poems. We currently have 79,663 translations and are trying to create the largest and most accurate database of world poetry translations. We have started with machine translations which are very inaccurate. Please translate your favorite poem on this site. You will be given credit for your translation and a link to your site if desired. COPYRIGHT NOTICE: These poems have been gathered and submitted by many of people, and from many sources. Most have no copyright. However, some may may have copyrights. We have tried to collect poems that appear on many external sites where the author seems to want to disseminate. If you are an author and do not want your poetry translated into other languages then send a removal request and it will be promptly removed.