My child was born over the radio at noon
calling, crying, appearing--clearly mine.
She displayed an instant madness, an affinity for the moon
accepting only pomegranate and warm plum wine
as Nurse counted up the medications and the spoons.
We communicate by carvings, deep and raw
and love words mercurial and gritty as a dune,
that respect no wound, no custom, no law.
My elephant child, heavy, hunted, wise
eludes rubber-handed teachers of the exhausted strike
arriving in little rowboats in full courtly disguise
to mine my little darling as she rides her phantasmal bike
down to the grave of stars to kiss the thing that dies
in a tiny wooden cradle beneath a concrete sun
to bring it back, to make it rise
and then her work is done.
Come, child of animals, black earth and fire
to the shelter I have cobbled from discarded turtle shells
where poets burn on pages, porches, pyres
and all variety of heavens, limbos, hells
to arrange your dolls named Judgement and Desire
who sit on silken pillows or in coffins fit with bells
to call their mothers, those beauties, belles and hags
combined into an advocate for my child with tongue flat-felled
by a celebrated seamstress, dumbly mute and dressed in rags.
_____
for Word Garden Word List--Anne Sexton
Music:
Sin City
Sin City