From First to Firstborn
I know now what I didn’t know then
with the ever soft grass and the trees
weighted with fruit, too much fruit.
But you can’t understand by words
that is the great lie.
Truth starts as a sweetness on the tongue,
only to be thorns in the throat.
I haven’t always spoken with this rasp
that we share. That was our mistake
not yours. In the darkness of your birth,
your mother screamed until the night fractured,
screamed like nothing named.
I had held this sharp stone as we had wandered
through the collapse of sun and moon.
I had held it as your mother swelled
like the moon, until I could no longer bear
her brightness. I found myself howling
with her that night, as she asked me to cut you out,
but I was too weak, the stone too heavy. It seems foolish now.
I had squeezed it so that my hand opened,
as your mother opened, a truth of sorts.
I will keep this scar, as I keep all my scars,
but give you this stone so that you too may experience.
I know now what I didn’t know then
with the ever soft grass and the trees
weighted with fruit, too much fruit.
But you can’t understand by words
that is the great lie.
Truth starts as a sweetness on the tongue,
only to be thorns in the throat.
I haven’t always spoken with this rasp
that we share. That was our mistake
not yours. In the darkness of your birth,
your mother screamed until the night fractured,
screamed like nothing named.
I had held this sharp stone as we had wandered
through the collapse of sun and moon.
I had held it as your mother swelled
like the moon, until I could no longer bear
her brightness. I found myself howling
with her that night, as she asked me to cut you out,
but I was too weak, the stone too heavy. It seems foolish now.
I had squeezed it so that my hand opened,
as your mother opened, a truth of sorts.
I will keep this scar, as I keep all my scars,
but give you this stone so that you too may experience.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.--Jon Anderson