love set you going like a fat gold watch.
the midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
took its place among the elements.
our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. new statue.
in a drafty museum, your nakedness
shadows our safety, we stand round blankly as walls.
i’m no more your mother
than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow
effacement at the wind’s hand.
all night your moth-breath
flickers among the flat pink roses. i wake to listen;
a far sea moves in my ear.
one cry, and i stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral
in my victorian nightgown.
your moth opens clear as a cat’s. the window square
whitens and swallows its dull stars. and now you try
your handful of notes;
the clear vowels rise like balloons.
Sylvia Plath.
