Anne Stevenson Poems

Feet that could be clawed but are not ...
Arms that might have flown but did not ...
No one said 'Let there be angels!' but the birds
...

'I think I'm going to have it,'
I said, joking between pains.
The midwife rolled competent
...

They were to have been a love gift,
but when she slit the paper funnel,
they both saw they were fake; false flowers
he'd picked in haste from the store's display,
...

This House
Which represents you, as my bones do, waits,
all pores open, for the stun of snow. Which will come,
as it always does, between breaths, between nights
...

Dr Animus, whose philosophy is a table,
sits down contently to a square meal.
The plates lie there, and there,
just where they should lie.
...

They give you a desk with a lid, mother.
They let you keep your book.
My desk is next to the window.
...

Look for me
where I learned to look for myself,
in my ring of attempts
in the light of a sinking candle.
...

Falling to sleep last night in a deep crevasse
between one rough dream and another, I seemed,
still awake, to be stranded on a stony path,
and there the familiar enigma presented itself
...

There, in that lost
corner of the ordnance survey.
Drive through the vanity —
two pubs and a garage — of Satley,
...

Spring comes little, a little. All April it rains.
The new leaves stick in their fists; new ferns still fiddleheads.
But one day the swifts are back. Face to the sun like a child
You shout, 'The swifts are back!'
...