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Unknown Girl in the Maternity Ward

Child, the current of your breath is six days long.  
You lie, a small knuckle on my white bed;  
lie, fisted like a snail, so small and strong
at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed  
with love. At first hunger is not wrong.
The nurses nod their caps; you are shepherded  
down starch halls with the other unnested throng  
in wheeling baskets. You tip like a cup; your head  
moving to my touch. You sense the way we belong.  
But this is an institution bed.
You will not know me very long.
 
The doctors are enamel. They want to know
the facts. They guess about the man who left me,  
some pendulum soul, going the way men go  
and leave you full of child. But our case history  
stays blank. All I did was let you grow.  
Now we are here for all the ward to see.  
They thought I was strange, although  
I never spoke a word. I burst empty  
of you, letting you learn how the air is so.  
The doctors chart the riddle they ask of me  
and I turn my head away. I do not know.
 
Yours is the only face I recognize.
Bone at my bone, you drink my answers in.  
Six times a day I prize
your need, the animals of your lips, your skin  
growing warm and plump. I see your eyes
lifting their tents. They are blue stones, they begin  
to outgrow their moss. You blink in surprise
and I wonder what you can see, my funny kin,  
as you trouble my silence. I am a shelter of lies.  
Should I learn to speak again, or hopeless in  
such sanity will I touch some face I recognize?
 
Down the hall the baskets start back. My arms  
fit you like a sleeve, they hold
catkins of your willows, the wild bee farms  
of your nerves, each muscle and fold
of your first days. Your old man’s face disarms  
the nurses. But the doctors return to scold  
me. I speak. It is you my silence harms.  
I should have known; I should have told
them something to write down. My voice alarms  
my throat. “Name of father—none.” I hold  
you and name you bastard in my arms.
 
And now that’s that. There is nothing more  
that I can say or lose.
Others have traded life before
and could not speak. I tighten to refuse  
your owling eyes, my fragile visitor.
I touch your cheeks, like flowers. You bruise  
against me. We unlearn. I am a shore  
rocking you off. You break from me. I choose  
your only way, my small inheritor
and hand you off, trembling the selves we lose.  
Go child, who is my sin and nothing more.
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