Poem for a Daughter
'I think I 'm going to have it',
I said, joking between pains.
The midwife rolled competent
sleeves over corpulent milky
arms.
'Dear, you never have it,
we deliver it.'
A judgement years proved true.
Certainly I've never had you
as you still have me, Caroline.
Why does a mother need a
daughter?
Heart's needle, hostage to
fortune,
freedom's end. Yet nothing 's
more perfect
than that bleeding, razar-shaped
cry
that delivers a mother to her
baby.
The blood cord snaps that held
their sphere together. The child,
tiny and alone, creates the
mother.
A woman's life is her own
until it is taken away
by a first particular cry.
Then she is not alone
but part of the premises
of everything there is:
a time, a tribe, a war.
When we belong to the world
we become what we are.
