A poem By Anne Sexton (1975) Riding the Elevator Into the Sky

As the fireman said: Don't book a room over the fifth floor in any hotel in New York. They have ladders that will reach further but no one will climb them. As the New York Times said: The elevator always seeks out the floor of the fire and automatically opens and won't shut. These are the warnings that you must forget if you're climbing out of yourself. If you're going to smash into the sky. Many times I've gone past the fifth floor, cranking upward, but only once have I gone all the way up. Sixtieth floor: small plants and swans bending into their grave. Floor two hundred: mountains with the patience of a cat, silence wearing its sneakers. Floor five hundred: messages and letters centuries old, birds to drink, a kitchen of clouds. Floor six thousand: the stars, skeletons on fire, their arms singing. And a key, a very large key, that opens something — some useful door — somewhere — up there.

Riding the Elevator Into the Sky

By Anne Sexton (1975) As the fireman said: Don't book a room over the fifth floor in any hotel in New York. They have ladders that will reach further but no one will climb them. As the New York Times said: The elevator always seeks out the floor of the fire and automatically opens and won't shut. These are the warnings that you must forget if you're climbing out of yourself. If you're going to smash into the sky. Many times I've gone past the fifth floor, cranking upward, but only once have I gone all the way up. Sixtieth floor: small plants and swans bending into their grave. Floor two hundred: mountains with the patience of a cat, silence wearing its sneakers. Floor five hundred: messages and letters centuries old, birds to drink, a kitchen of clouds. Floor six thousand: the stars, skeletons on fire, their arms singing. And a key, a very large key, that opens something — some useful door — somewhere — up there.