38 Baby poems

After a while I thought of it this way: It was a town underneath a mountain crowned by snow and every year a river rushed through, enveloping the dusk in a noise everyone knew signaled spring— a small town, known for a kind of calico, made there, strong and unglazed, a makeshift of cotton in which the actual unseparated husks still remained and could be found if you looked behind the coarse daisies and the red-billed bird with swept-back wings always trying to arrive safely on the inch or so of cotton it might have occupied if anyone had offered it. And if you ask me now what happened to it— the town that is—the answer is of course there was no town, it never actually existed, and the calico, the glazed cotton on which a bird never landed is not gone, because it never was, never once, but then how to explain that sometimes I can hear the river in those first days of April, making its way through the dusk, having learned to speak the way I once spoke, saying as if I didn't love you, as if I wouldn't have died for you.

for my daughter Erika, on the birth of Ivy Creston I found it in a box I sifted through as I cleaned my office. How clear in mind, the time you drew it nearly thirty years ago. From dawn to dark, a sort of dusk prevailed, the nightbirds up all hours. I've stumbled on signs of ruthless murder in such a day— intinction of snow and blood. I've pictured talons. Not knowing what I felt, still I have sensed, without my witness, intricate change had happened. Snow of course can offer other signs: sweep of a grouse's wing where it flushed and flew, the raptor's errant jabs mere blots to the side, no blatancy of red on the cold white cover. In any case, it was that kind of day when you held the blue-green crayon as gently as a mother might her child, your hand so small I could cry. You frowned, and carefully drew three sides of a square, and then, above, a pair of slanting lines, to roof your house. Then swatches of sky. You glanced sidelong at me: did I approve or not? I knew that this was what you meant to ask. I chuckled. Please forgive me. I stroked your cheek. Look at you now! A mother twice at once, in a home built plumb and true on a leafy street. I consider these parallelograms you drew, each with a cross inside, to form two windows, which, you said, were there for me and you, "For looking down the road." The road was made of lines as well, which—not quite parallel— ran right from the doorway off the edge of the page. I clutch you tight in mind as I did so far back down that road, your picture done for then. I pray your babies' dreams and landscapes are as clean and sweet as you seemed to me that day, a perfect figure underneath those Vs —those harmless birds, or bird-abstractions—high above the house in their lambent blue-green sky.

—after Steve Scafidi The way the universe sat waiting to become, quietly, in the nether of space and time, you too remain some cellular snuggle dangling between my legs, curled in the warm swim of my mostly quietest self. If you come to be— And who knows?—I wonder, little bubble of unbudded capillaries, little one ever aswirl in my vascular galaxies, what would you think of this world which turns itself steadily into an oblivion that hurts, and hurts bad? Would you curse me my careless caressing you into this world or would you rise up and, mustering all your strength into that tiny throat which one day, no doubt, would grow big and strong, scream and scream and scream until you break the back of one injustice, or at least get to your knees to kiss back to life some roadkill? I have so many questions for you, for you are closer to me than anyone has ever been, tumbling, as you are, this second, through my heart’s every chamber, your teeny mouth singing along with the half-broke workhorse’s steady boom and gasp. And since we’re talking today I should tell you, though I know you sneak a peek sometimes through your father’s eyes, it’s a glorious day, and there are millions of leaves collecting against the curbs, and they’re the most delicate shade of gold we’ve ever seen and must favor the transparent wings of the angels you’re swimming with, little angel. And as to your mother—well, I don’t know— but my guess is that lilac bursts from her throat and she is both honeybee and wasp and some kind of moan to boot and probably she dances in the morning— but who knows? You’ll swim beneath that bridge if it comes. For now let me tell you about the bush called honeysuckle that the sad call a weed, and how you could push your little sun-licked face into the throngs and breathe and breathe. Sweetness would be your name, and you would wonder why four of your teeth are so sharp, and the tiny mountain range of your knuckles so hard. And you would throw back your head and open your mouth at the cows lowing their human songs in the field, and the pigs swimming in shit and clover, and everything on this earth, little dreamer, little dreamer of the new world, holy, every rain drop and sand grain and blade of grass worthy of gasp and joy and love, tiny shaman, tiny blood thrust, tiny trillion cells trilling and trilling, little dreamer, little hard hat, little heartbeat, little best of me.

Tiny bit of humanity, Blessed with your mother’s face, And cursed with your father’s mind. I say cursed with your father’s mind, Because you can lie so long and so quietly on your back, Playing with the dimpled big toe of your left foot, And looking away, Through the ceiling of the room, and beyond. Can it be that already you are thinking of being a poet? Why don’t you kick and howl, And make the neighbors talk about “That damned baby next door,” And make up your mind forthwith To grow up and be a banker Or a politician or some other sort of go-getter Or—?—whatever you decide upon, Rid yourself of these incipient thoughts About being a poet. For poets no longer are makers of songs, Chanters of the gold and purple harvest, Sayers of the glories of earth and sky, Of the sweet pain of love And the keen joy of living; No longer dreamers of the essential dreams, And interpreters of the eternal truth, Through the eternal beauty. Poets these days are unfortunate fellows. Baffled in trying to say old things in a new way Or new things in an old language, They talk abracadabra In an unknown tongue, Each one fashioning for himself A wordy world of shadow problems, And as a self-imagined Atlas, Struggling under it with puny legs and arms, Groaning out incoherent complaints at his load. My son, this is no time nor place for a poet; Grow up and join the big, busy crowd That scrambles for what it thinks it wants Out of this old world which is—as it is— And, probably, always will be. Take the advice of a father who knows: You cannot begin too young Not to be a poet.

Soon the glass angel must be Wrapped and packed and put away, And this hard year swept out Like tinsel from the Christmas tree— The end of December, aromatic In its homely smoke, and the thin limbs Of maple and ash, the pipecleaner pines, Brushing themselves against The cold carbons of evening. I've watched the ice turn Little knifeblades in the grass. Sly beneath them, the mole Knows what to do with dirt— Shoulder it aside, crumb by claw, And build a city deep, A labyrinth of dark Under the stone and the root. I think I could live there. I think I could make A music of my own. Thinking Makes a music of its own. You can hear it when Some stray phrase stumbles down The rabbit hole, a few words That broke from the brain And won't go back, always One step ahead of the real. But what's in the way To the way in? God, That desperate explanation, Mentor and tormentor, giving us The duties of paradise, Obligations of the saved? And is my way in This abyss of the belly, where they Tied the first knot in my life? Even the virgin must have felt The postpartum blues, crazy enough To pin sweet curls in her hair, Shavings she picked up from The floor of the carpenter's shop. I think I can still hear The baby wailing. Or is that cry The dead beating on their graves For the earth to open— And to let them out, or to let us in?

(for Douglas, at one) Archaic, his gestures hieratic, just like Caesar or Sappho or Mary’s Jesus or Ann’s Mary or Jane Austen once, or me or your mother’s you the sudden baby surges to his feet and sways, head forward, chin high, arms akimbo, hands dangling idle, elbows up, as if winged. The features of his face stand out amazed, all eyes as his aped posture sustains him aloft a step a step a rush and he walks, Young Anyone, his lifted point of view far beyond the calendar. What time is it? Firm in time he is out of date— like a cellarer for altar wines tasting many summers in one glass, or like a grandmother in whose womb her granddaughter once slept in egg inside grandma’s unborn daughter’s folded ovaries.

1 I cradled my newborn daughter and felt the heartbeat pull me out of shock. She didn’t know what her hands were: she folded them. I asked her was there a place where there was no world. She didn’t know what a voice was: her lips were the shape of a nipple. 2 In the park the child says: watch me. It will not count unless you see. And she shows me the cartwheel, the skip, the tumble, the tricks performed at leisure in midair, each unknown until it is finished. At home she orders: see me eat. I watch her curl on herself, sleep; as I try to leave the dark room her dreaming voice commands me: watch. 3 Always we passed the seesaw on the way to the swings but tonight I remember the principle of the lever, I sit the child at one end, I sit near the center, the fulcrum, at once she has power to lift me off the earth and keep me suspended by her tiny weight, she laughing, I stunned at the power of the formula.

Baby is unique untainted, original We know she is special Every baby is She arrives without baggage to hamper her way through tunnels or time but she demands attention AND HOW Baby means to survive aims to be fed, changed, bathed resorting to no more than a cry a squirm I observe Baby now that she breathes on her own I swear I’ll keep copious notes I’ll invite her for dinner or lunch for a glug of lukewarm milk I vow to take good care          I WILL Why, then, does she bathe in the sink No one, not a single one, close by to lift her out Why, then, does she not grow Neglected Baby Pauvre Enfant I have asked Baby to forgive me Baby, Baby stay          Baby, Baby stay Do not become a stab in my brain a chronic ache a shrouded shout a question mark laid out in the morgue daily vivisection vapor-spiral woe going mad beyond control though the venue is small and it doesn’t matter where one sleeps There is evil in the world It awaits Baby Sins                              even Sloth fiesta through hills and vales each time she is born Morals and meanings stumble but Sins know how to tango and tap They make nimble partners on the ballroom floor Like tigers they stalk their prey Lead, follow, tight embrace Baby in a frame, a pose in a box Tricky moves l a n g u i d               obambulations warm morning          sunny day One, two, three, four         one, two, three, four We touch, we part We yearn for tender mores Baby beware Baby be quick Jump for the sky Match to your flame Watch the flares fly Baby, there’s scorch here

We brought that newborn home from Maimonides and showed her nine blue glittering streets. Would she like the semis with hoods of snow? The precinct? Bohack’s? A lit diner? Her eyes were huge and her gaze tilted like milk in a pan, toward shadow. Would she like the tenement, three dim flights, her crib that smelled of Lemon Pledge? We slept beside her in our long coats, rigid with fatigue in the unmade bed. Her breath woke us with its slight catch. Would she approve of gray winter dawn? We showed her daylight in our cupped hands. Then the high clocks began booming in this city and the next, we counted for her, but just the strokes, not the laggards or the tinny echoes, and we taught her how to wait, how to watch, how to be held, in that icy room, until our own alarm chimed.

In the end, he has to teach them everything, even death, as he finds them that night by the fire, giggling and buzzing more like brother and sister than father and mother, waiting for him to bring meat for the evening meal, not noticing the gore matting the hair to his arms and chest, no more surprised than the first time they'd laid eyes on him when he'd slipped like a small, thrashing gift from the net of his mother. For days, they'd left him in the same place where he'd fallen, alone, around him a pile of rotting fruit they kept adding to. His cries had puzzled then delighted them until he finally grew weary of their laughter and of waiting and crawled to where his mother lay by the fire, his nose knowing the way to her dugs, untended, leaking and already sour, and he'd clamped his jaw down so hard he tasted blood in the first warm suck, this act taken not so much in anger or in hunger, but as a way to announce his presence. Now, they blink at him through the flames, and he isn't sure they even know which of the two he is. When he explains, they nod yes, smiling, as if he were the herald of a new mystery, a coming storm or a fire in the mountains. When he leads them to where his brother lies a dry, broken stalk among the rocks, they nod again, still smiling but unsure now, so he must lift his brother again, cradle his shallow bones against his chest, the head worn into the nook under his neck, and draw the knife again, just as he's done a thousand times before, always as if in practice not for the murder itself, but for this dumb show for mother and father. The blade finds the wound, flicks past his own throat, and he hears again the sound a soul makes leaking from a body, but there is no blood this time, he must give them all, blood and thunder and retribution, he must teach them everything, even life, so only when he hurtles out into the night does he hear the first cry, his, not theirs, the sobs rippling out, lapping over and through him, until they are enormous, pitiless, no longer his, but the maw of a god who will damn but never devour him.