An Obsessive Combination Of Onotological Inscape, Trickery And Love

By Anne Sexton

Busy, with an idea for a code, I write

signals hurrying from left to right,

or right to left, by obscure routes,

for my own reasons; taking a word like writes

down tiers of tries until its secret rites

make sense; or until, suddenly, RATS

can amazingly and funnily become STAR

and right to left that small star

is mine, for my own liking, to stare

its five lucky pins inside out, to store

forever kindly, as if it were a star

I touched and a miracle I really wrote.