With+Child

[|Genevieve Taggard]

//With Child//

Now I am slow and placid, fond of sun, Like a sleek beast, or a worn one, No slim and languid girl – not glad With the windy trip I once had, But velvet-footed, musing of my own, Torpid, mellow, stupid as a stone.

You cleft me with your beauty's pulse, and now Your pulse has taken body. Care not how The old grace goes, how heavy I am grown, Big with this loneliness, how you alone Ponder our love. Touch my feet and feel How earth tingles, teeming at my heel! Earth's urge, not mine, – my little death, not hers; And the pure beauty yearns and stirs.

It does not heed our ecstacies, it turns With secrets of its own, its own concerns, Toward a windy world of its own, toward stark And solitary places. In the dark Defiant even now; it tugs and moans To be untangled from these mother's bones.