Poem About A Difficult Birth
Poem About A Difficult Birth
Note: this poem is about the birth of my daughter, a birth which was grotesquely mismanaged in a provincial hospital in Japan. Labor ended up extending to something close to or exceeding 72 hours, and, toward the end, the whole thing became something of a medical emergency.
Being present at my daughter's birth was the one single most hideous experience of my entire life.
When the child had finally been born, my wife had difficulty in believing that the baby was alive.
With that preamble, here is the poem:
BIRTH ON PLANET GRAVITY
I had always thought of birth
As a catastrophe:
Forced from the world of constant warmth and water
To the harsh scrubbed air of Planet Gravity.
Unhooked from the umbilical, displaced
From immortal complacency
To the slaughterhouse of light.
Jumbled by shapes, lost
In the gesticulating air.
Severed from the reference frame,
Bewildered, baffled,
Screaming at fluorescents.
And this birth, yes,
Was like that,
Only harder, bloodier, more terrifying
Than the extremes of my imagination.
I used to dream, years ago,
(I had forgotten those dreams)
Of my own birth,
An endless crushing pressure,
Darkness compressed upon darkness,
The infinite constrictions of nowhere
Inflicting identity upon me.
And this birth, I think,
Was like that.
But what delights me about Miss Mutiny
(A bundle of wriggles
As yet pinned down by gravity)
Is how comfortably she
Inhabits her face, her features —
How relaxed her ease, as if
To be pure human was effortless.
Copyright © 2004 Hugh Cook
Photocopiable: may be photocopied for classroom use
Note: this poem is about the birth of my daughter, a birth which was grotesquely mismanaged in a provincial hospital in Japan. Labor ended up extending to something close to or exceeding 72 hours, and, toward the end, the whole thing became something of a medical emergency.
Being present at my daughter's birth was the one single most hideous experience of my entire life.
When the child had finally been born, my wife had difficulty in believing that the baby was alive.
With that preamble, here is the poem:
BIRTH ON PLANET GRAVITY
I had always thought of birth
As a catastrophe:
Forced from the world of constant warmth and water
To the harsh scrubbed air of Planet Gravity.
Unhooked from the umbilical, displaced
From immortal complacency
To the slaughterhouse of light.
Jumbled by shapes, lost
In the gesticulating air.
Severed from the reference frame,
Bewildered, baffled,
Screaming at fluorescents.
And this birth, yes,
Was like that,
Only harder, bloodier, more terrifying
Than the extremes of my imagination.
I used to dream, years ago,
(I had forgotten those dreams)
Of my own birth,
An endless crushing pressure,
Darkness compressed upon darkness,
The infinite constrictions of nowhere
Inflicting identity upon me.
And this birth, I think,
Was like that.
But what delights me about Miss Mutiny
(A bundle of wriggles
As yet pinned down by gravity)
Is how comfortably she
Inhabits her face, her features —
How relaxed her ease, as if
To be pure human was effortless.
Copyright © 2004 Hugh Cook
Photocopiable: may be photocopied for classroom use
posted by Hugh Cook at
3:19 AM
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