Anne Sexton

 

Music Swims Back to Me

Wait Mister. Which way is home?   

They turned the light out

and the dark is moving in the corner.   

There are no sign posts in this room,   

four ladies, over eighty,

in diapers every one of them.

La la la, Oh music swims back to me   

and I can feel the tune they played   

the night they left me

in this private institution on a hill.

Imagine it. A radio playing

and everyone here was crazy.

I liked it and danced in a circle.   

Music pours over the sense   

and in a funny way

music sees more than I.

I mean it remembers better;

remembers the first night here.

It was the strangled cold of November;   

even the stars were strapped in the sky   

and that moon too bright

forking through the bars to stick me   

with a singing in the head.

I have forgotten all the rest.

They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.   

and there are no signs to tell the way,   

just the radio beating to itself   

and the song that remembers   

more than I. Oh, la la la,   

this music swims back to me.   

The night I came I danced a circle   

and was not afraid.

Mister?