Anne Sexton's Original Poem "45 Mercy Street": The Genesis of Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street"

Peter Gabriel was inspired to write his haunting and timeless song “Mercy Street” after reading a poem called, “45 Mercy Street” by American poet Anne Sexton. I don’t think most people who love Gabriel’s hugely popular album So know much about the muse who inspired this song. Here is a glimpse. First, let’s look at the lyrics of her poem.

45 Mercy Street by Anne Sexton

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 Street by Peter Gabriel

Looking down on empty streets, all she can see

Are the dreams all made solid

Are the dreams all made realAll of the buildings, all of those cars

Were once just a dream

In somebody’s headShe pictures the broken glass, she pictures the steam

She pictures a soul

With no leak at the seamLets take the boat out

Wait until darkness

Let’s take the boat out

Wait until darkness comesNowhere in the corridors of pale green and grey

Nowhere in the suburbs

In the cold light of dayThere in the midst of it so alive and alone

Words support like boneDreaming of mercy st.

Wear your inside out

Dreaming of mercy

In your daddy(‘s arms again

Dreaming of mercy st.

‘swear they moved that sign

Dreaming of mercy

In your daddy’s arms

Pulling out the papers from the drawers that slide smooth

Tugging at the darkness, word upon word

Confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box

To the priest-he’s the doctor

He can handle the shocksDreaming of the tenderness-the tremble in the hips

Of kissing Mary’s lipsDreaming of mercy st.

Wear your insides out

Dreaming of mercy

In your daddy’s arms again

Dreaming of mercy st.

‘swear they moved that sign

Looking for mercy

In your daddy’s armsMercy, mercy, looking for mercy

Mercy, mercy, looking for mercyAnne, with her father is out in the boat

Riding the water

Riding the waves on the sea

Both poems seethe with a boiling darkness just under the surface. There is plenty of sexual suggestion (warm velvet box), as well as allusions to the unconscious (the sea, darkness, the unseen). The priest in Gabriel’s song is also a father figure, and biographers know that Anne had a difficult relationship with her own father. Another religious allusion: kissing Mary’s lips, rhyming with “tremble in the hips”, makes it that much more powerful. Sexton spent eight years in psychotherapy. She was uneasy with success and winning such honors as the Pulitzer Prize; it didn’t take the dark visions away from her powerful, confessional verse.

I read online, “In an interview over a year before her death, she explained she had written the first drafts of The Awful Rowing Toward God in twenty days with two days out for despair and three days out in a mental hospital.” She went on to say that she would not allow the poems to be published before her death (Wikipedia entry).

This posthumous title might have inspired Gabriel’s last line of his dark, haunting song. Anne Sexton committed suicide, her fifth attempt successful, in 1974, twelve years before Gabriel’s album was released.

Here are some rare clips of Sexton reading her poetry and other illuminations about her life.

Here is Anne Sexton at home. In the first poem she muses on death. She has a masculine way of talking, a strong voice and very matter-of-fact. My friend Jasmin said she was a “cool broad”. Yes she was. She smiles when she hugs her daughter. But the darkness was never very far away and the inner demons persisted. A few years after these informal home movies, she threw down a glass of vodka and went into the garage, shut all the doors, started up the car, and died of carbon monoxide inhalation.