Читать книгу Door in the Mountain - Jean Valentine - Страница 102

Afterbirth

I loiter in the eye of the Slough,

Every joint aching for sleep;

The sky, inhumanly deep,

Sarcastically casts back the Slough.

Did my child take breath to cry

At the slick hand that hooked her out,

Or cry to breathe? or did she lie

Still in her private dark, curled taut

Under her sleep's hobgoblin shout?

Anesthesia blew me out:

I gardened shadows in my lost crib

While they took her from me like a rib.

Swaddled and barred, she curls in sleep

At the dry edge of mortality.

If the sky's side proves too steep

Who will take up the little old lady,

Who will call her by her name

When she's a crumble of bones?

What logos lights the filament of time,

Carbon arc fusing birth-stone to head-stone?

The mud pulls harder: the stepping stones

Shake in front of my swimming eyes.

There dear, there dear, here's a pill:

Sleep, sleep, all will be well:

Lull-lullaby.