World Poetry Translation Project

Please Join My Facebook Page by CLICKING HERE Diccussions, translations and positive people at our Facebook Page Rapunzel by Anne Sexton A woman who loves a woman is forever young. The mentor and the student feed off each other. Many a girl had an old aunt who locked her in the study to keep the boys away. They would play rummy or lie on the couch and touch and touch. Old breast against young breast... Let your dress fall down your shoulder, come touch a copy of you for I am at the mercy of rain, for I have left the three Christs of Ypsilanti for I have left the long naps of Ann Arbor and the church spires have turned to stumps. The sea bangs into my cloister for the politicians are dying, and dying so hold me, my young dear, hold me... The yellow rose will turn to cinder and New York City will fall in before we are done so hold me, my young dear, hold me. Put your pale arms around my neck. Let me hold your heart like a flower lest it bloom and collapse. Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark. Give me your nether lips all puffy with their art and I will give you angel fire in return. We are two clouds glistening in the bottle galss. We are two birds washing in the same mirror. We were fair game but we have kept out of the cesspool. We are strong. We are the good ones. Do not discover us for we lie together all in green like pond weeds. Hold me, my young dear, hold me. They touch their delicate watches one at a time. They dance to the lute two at a time. They are as tender as bog moss. They play mother-me-do all day. A woman who loves a woman is forever young. Once there was a witch's garden more beautiful than Eve's with carrots growing like little fish, with many tomatoes rich as frogs, onions as ingrown as hearts, the squash singing like a dolphin and one patch given over wholly to magic -- rampion, a kind of salad root a kind of harebell more potent than penicillin, growing leaf by leaf, skin by skin. as rapt and as fluid as Isadoran Duncan. However the witch's garden was kept locked and each day a woman who was with child looked upon the rampion wildly, fancying that she would die if she could not have it. Her husband feared for her welfare and thus climbed into the garden to fetch the life-giving tubers. Ah ha, cried the witch, whose proper name was Mother Gothel, you are a thief and now you will die. However they made a trade, typical enough in those times. He promised his child to Mother Gothel so of course when it was born she took the child away with her. She gave the child the name Rapunzel, another name for the life-giving rampion. Because Rapunzel was a beautiful girl Mother Gothel treasured her beyond all things. As she grew older Mother Gothel thought: None but I will ever see her or touch her. She locked her in a tow without a door or a staircase. It had only a high window. When the witch wanted to enter she cried" Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. Rapunzel's hair fell to the ground like a rainbow. It was as strong as a dandelion and as strong as a dog leash. Hand over hand she shinnied up the hair like a sailor and there in the stone-cold room, as cold as a museum, Mother Gothel cried: Hold me, my young dear, hold me, and thus they played mother-me-do. Years later a prince came by and heard Rapunzel singing her loneliness. That song pierced his heart like a valentine but he could find no way to get to her. Like a chameleon he hid himself among the trees and watched the witch ascend the swinging hair. The next day he himself called out: Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, and thus they met and he declared his love. What is this beast, she thought, with muscles on his arms like a bag of snakes? What is this moss on his legs? What prickly plant grows on his cheeks? What is this voice as deep as a dog? Yet he dazzled her with his answers. Yet he dazzled her with his dancing stick. They lay together upon the yellowy threads, swimming through them like minnows through kelp and they sang out benedictions like the Pope. Each day he brought her a skein of silk to fashion a ladder so they could both escape. But Mother Gothel discovered the plot and cut off Rapunzel's hair to her ears and took her into the forest to repent. When the prince came the witch fastened the hair to a hook and let it down. When he saw Rapunzel had been banished he flung himself out of the tower, a side of beef. He was blinded by thorns that prickled him like tacks. As blind as Oedipus he wandered for years until he heard a song that pierced his heart like that long-ago valentine. As he kissed Rapunzel her tears fell on his eyes and in the manner of such cure-alls his sight was suddenly restored. They lived happily as you might expect proving that mother-me-do can be outgrown, just as the fish on Friday, just as a tricycle. The world, some say, is made up of couples. A rose must have a stem. As for Mother Gothel, her heart shrank to the size of a pin, never again to say: Hold me, my young dear, hold me, and only as she dreamed of the yellow hair did moonlight sift into her mouth. Please Join My Facebook Page by CLICKING HERE

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

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

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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

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