cinderella

• anne sexton'ın şiiri.
  
  you always read about it:
  the plumber with the twelve children
  who wins the irish sweepstakes.
  from toilets to riches.
  that story.
  
  or the nursemaid,
  some luscious sweet from denmark
  who captures the oldest son's heart.
  from diapers to dior.
  that story.
  
  or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
  eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
  the white truck like an ambulance
  who goes into real estate
  and makes a pile.
  from homogenized to martinis at lunch.
  
  or the charwoman
  who is on the bus when it cracks up
  and collects enough from the insurance.
  from mops to bonwit teller.
  that story.
  
  once
  the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
  and she said to her daughter cinderella:
  be devout. be good. then i will smile
  down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
  the man took another wife who had
  two daughters, pretty enough
  but with hearts like blackjacks.
  cinderella was their maid.
  she slept on the sooty hearth each night
  and walked around looking like al jolson.
  her father brought presents home from town,
  jewels and gowns for the other women
  but the twig of a tree for cinderella.
  she planted that twig on her mother's grave
  and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
  whenever she wished for anything the dove
  would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
  the bird is important, my dears, so heed him.
  
  next came the ball, as you all know.
  it was a marriage market.
  the prince was looking for a wife.
  all but cinderella were preparing
  and gussying up for the event.
  cinderella begged to go too.
  her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
  into the cinders and said: pick them
  up in an hour and you shall go.
  the white dove brought all his friends;
  all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
  and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
  no, cinderella, said the stepmother,
  you have no clothes and cannot dance.
  that's the way with stepmothers.
  
  cinderella went to the tree at the grave
  and cried forth like a gospel singer:
  mama! mama! my turtledove,
  send me to the prince's ball!
  the bird dropped down a golden dress
  and delicate little slippers.
  rather a large package for a simple bird.
  so she went. which is no surprise.
  her stepmother and sisters didn't
  recognize her without her cinder face
  and the prince took her hand on the spot
  and danced with no other the whole day.
  
  as nightfall came she thought she'd better
  get home. the prince walked her home
  and she disappeared into the pigeon house
  and although the prince took an axe and broke
  it open she was gone. back to her cinders.
  these events repeated themselves for three days.
  however on the third day the prince
  covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
  and cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
  now he would find whom the shoe fit
  and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
  he went to their house and the two sisters
  were delighted because they had lovely feet.
  the eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
  but her big toe got in the way so she simply
  sliced it off and put on the slipper.
  the prince rode away with her until the white dove
  told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
  that is the way with amputations.
  they just don't heal up like a wish.
  the other sister cut off her heel
  but the blood told as blood will.
  the prince was getting tired.
  he began to feel like a shoe salesman.
  but he gave it one last try.
  this time cinderella fit into the shoe
  like a love letter into its envelope.
  
  at the wedding ceremony
  the two sisters came to curry favor
  and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
  two hollow spots were left
  like soup spoons.
  
  cinderella and the prince
  lived, they say, happily ever after,
  like two dolls in a museum case
  never bothered by diapers or dust,
  never arguing over the timing of an egg,
  never telling the same story twice,
  never getting a middle-aged spread,
  their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
  regular bobbsey twins.
  that story.