In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children
It is simple if you look at it
as the village did, brand us
haphazardly as fallen: Their hands
glued to our garden walls
with the first mud since mud’s
making, rabid eyes
indicting us as stones finally
condemn a body to its fate—
What were they but a pack
of voyeurs, hollowing
a garret for themselves
in our misery?
No one stepped apart
from that mob to say,
There is nothing evil in a woman
toiling to keep the one
she loves fed, one fruit nourishes
like any other, and it might well
have been her heart, not
an apple, that she handed
to him that day. Perhaps
when you witnessed her crime,
you were really staring
into the sun.
If anyone had said so
they may have broken the spell
and the furious face
of judgment would have cleaved
into a herd of mercenaries
gone unknowingly astray,
suddenly aware they were attacking
an adversary they could not see.
If they began to feel shame
at their unruliness,
and tuck their hair behind
their ears, and admire my hearth
for its continuity, I would have
forgiven what I could, and welcomed
them to the table as anyone must,
from time to time, tolerate dirty
children who smash dishes
in their ignorance.
Instead, they dragged me naked
from my house, scoured me
like laundry against the river-bank,
jeered at every slope
of my form, and clothed me
as they dress themselves—a palm
leaf to shroud me from my husband
and my god, blinding both of them
who I call lord, whose domain
it is to see me as they knew me,
as they conspired to form me
from themselves, as one might
draw a bone from himself
and afterward, cradle the intimacy
of absence as well as the wound.
I am saying the rabble did wrong
the day they forced me to look
on myself as one is meant
to look only at their love, see
for myself what one sees who lays
me down, distract me from the stars
with the sight of my own skin and thus,
dull the light of both. And when I felt
all the sheen leave me, draining
as a bottle does between two
friends on a late night, and there was
nothing left to show, the heavens
looked at me and heaved a sigh
and said, It’s a girl.
