—Remember the darkness
of the beaten child all your days. Who was meant
to protect her. They hid under the stairs.
The mother clung to her and beat her,
clung to her and beat her,
the carefully heard.
So much that child wanted the mother’s good opinion
but the mother never spoke well of her,
hating her flesh, its ignorant blood . . .
Motherhood . . . Look: dawn
the color of the pietà. Motherhood
is sorrow . . .
You who do not exist: remember:
darkness created itself
for the child;
she put that poem under the stairs of chaos
but the edge still shines.
See what lies around you; look at his back.
Or at the dusty iris,
the hounds-tongue in the forest.
See your shadow in the dark—still gray grass,
some radiance above it:
everything has a border doesn’t it?
the edge where light cannot get in
until joy knows the original wound.
Which is why the earth is feminine,
and the body, not the soul, cries out in heaven—