The Abortion – Anne Sexton - Pg 401
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.
Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,
its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;
up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all...
he took the fullness that love began.
Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward... this baby that I bleed.
is gone.
Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.
Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,
its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;
up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all...
he took the fullness that love began.
Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward... this baby that I bleed.
This poem is obviously about abortion. The poet is expressing her pro-life stance. She states, almost directly, that aborted child was supposed to live; the aborted child was meant to be alive. The last line (“this baby that I bleed”) expresses the idea that the abortion of each child is a loss to society, not only a loss to the mother. That baby could have touched multiple people’s lives, but because that baby is no longer alive, the baby can no longer touch anyone’s life.
Though the narrator’s opinions and my opinions are similar, the topic is still a very touchy and sensitive. I have trouble reading about this topic. The deep, sensitive topic was simplified into emotionless speech. I understand why this was done, and I do view it as effective understatement. Regardless, it is difficult to read.
Repetition, particularly of “Somebody who should have been born/is gone”, adds to the meaning of the poem as a whole. The repetition causes that sentence to stand out and make become memorable. The understatement of the needless murders adds to the affect of the poem. The use of italics makes obvious the importance of the statement and draws attention to the phrase.
Another literary technique used in this poem is allusion. The poet alludes to Rumpelstiltskin. The fairytale of “Rumpelstiltskin” objectifies children. Children are offered as payment, used as bets, and thus seen as possessions or objects. In any abortion, the child isn’t viewed at as a human being. Their deaths aren’t viewed as murders, but they are abortions, a crime that’s not even seen as a crime and had no criminal charge.
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