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"45 Mercy Street" by Anne Sexton
In Anne's dream, she is able to wander the city streets, seeking her childhood home. She reminisces over familiar childhood scenes- the structure of the house, her family, the furniture. She can recall it all perfectly but she cannot seem to find it.
She desperately misses her grandmother, more than anything. Her fondest childhood memories are of her grandmother being the parental figure in her life. Anne refers to her father as "the stranger", and herself as "Horrid." It seems that her being born disrupts this picture-perfect heritage that she has created.
She brings herself back to the present, where she wanders the city streets, mentioning the pills in her purse. She feels timeless-trapped between her memories and her current life.
She feels her reality slipping away, her suburban life and family. She feels as if she has "sucked up" her children, and her husband keeps himself from seeing her true self. She comes to the harsh realization that she is searching for a street, and a mercy that she will never find.
She "throws" her nostalgia away, into the river, insisting that she will not be tangled up in her memories anymore, but is still clearly repressed by her current life.
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I’m walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign -
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.
I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant’s teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.
Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was…
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger’s seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.
I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
sucked up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.
Pull the shades down -
I don’t care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?
Not there.
I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.
Mercy. adj.
compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm
-home, address; desire to return to childhood
-Mercy, an escape from her depression/mental struggles
-Mercy, a way for her to return to her Nana
-Life itself having mercy on her
Questions?
Works Cited
Presented by SaraGrace Stefan
Ms. Brown
AP Literature
12/12/13