Category

Birth

Showing 1-20 of 21 results
  • Poem
    By Laura Gilpin
    Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
    freak of nature, they will wrap his body
    in newspaper and carry …
  • Poem
    By Countee Cullen
    Some are teethed on a silver spoon,
       With the stars strung for a rattle;
    I cut my teeth as the black raccoon—
       For implements of battle.

    Some are swaddled in silk and down,   
       And heralded by a star;
    They swathed my limbs in a sackcloth gown   
       On...
  • Poem
    By Alyse Knorr
    Between us bobs the baby, solemn in her infant wet suit.
    The pool is the only place where
                  screaming does not indicate terror.

    The neighbor’s pansy beds—O to lie down in those beds
    and doze. Greener than grass, says Sappho,
                  originator of envy.

    My...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    The Stork

    By Hannah Lowe
    The stork arrived alone one day,
    beak sharpened like a bayonet.
    All the love you’ve had turned bad! he sang,
    eyes boring through the dingy nets.
    He hopped onto the patio.
    Good lord! Is this a rented flat?

                    Behind the...
  • Poem
    By Ross Gay
    The way the universe sat waiting to become,
    quietly, in the nether of space and time,
     
    you too remain some cellular snuggle
    dangling between my legs, curled in the warm
     
    swim of my mostly quietest self. If you come to be—
    And who knows?—I wonder,...
  • Poem
    By N. Scott Momaday
    I am a feather on the bright sky
    I am the blue horse that runs in the plain
    I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water
    I am the shadow that follows a child
    I am the evening light, the lustre of...
  • Poem
    By W. D. Snodgrass
    1
    Child of my winter, born
    When the new fallen soldiers froze
    In Asia’s steep ravines and fouled the snows,   
    When I was torn


    By love I could not still,
    By fear that silenced my cramped mind
    To that cold war where, lost, I could not find   
    My...
  • Poem
    By Sylvia Plath
    Clownlike, happiest on your hands,   
    Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,   
    Gilled like a fish. A common-sense   
    Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.   
    Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,   
    Trawling your dark as owls do.   
    Mute as a turnip from the Fourth   
    Of July to All Fools’...
  • Poem
    By William Blake
    My mother groand! my father wept.
    Into the dangerous world I leapt:
    Helpless, naked, piping loud; 
    Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

    Struggling in my fathers hands: 
    Striving against my swaddling bands: 
    Bound and weary I thought best
    To sulk upon...
  • Poem
    By William Blake
    I have no name 
    I am but two days old.— 
    What shall I call thee?
    I happy am 
    Joy is my name,— 
    Sweet joy befall thee!

    Pretty joy!
    Sweet joy but two days old,
    Sweet joy I call thee; 
    Thou dost smile. 
    I sing the...
  • Poem
    By Hilda Raz
    New life! Will he toe out like Dolly, like John? Will her eyes be fires?
    Blue and green, like Papa's, the ocean at the shore?
    Will she sing in the bath? Play piano in her diapers?
    Will her heart leap at large machinery?...
  • Poem
    By William Butler Yeats
    Once more the storm is howling, and half hid   
    Under this cradle-hood and coverlid   
    My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle   
    But Gregory's Wood and one bare hill   
    Whereby the haystack and roof-levelling wind,   
    Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;   
    And for an hour...
  • Poem
    By Anna Lætitia Barbauld
    Germ of new life, whose powers expanding slow
    For many a moon their full perfection wait,—
    Haste, precious pledge of happy love, to go
    Auspicious borne through life's mysterious gate.

    What powers lie folded in thy curious frame,—
    Senses...
  • Poem
    By Algernon Charles Swinburne
    I
    A baby's feet, like sea-shells pink,
          Might tempt, should heaven see meet,
    An angel's lips to kiss, we think,
          A baby's feet.

    Like rose-hued sea-flowers toward the heat
          They stretch and spread and wink
    Their ten soft buds...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Only Child

    By D. Nurkse
    1

    I cradled my newborn daughter
    and felt the heartbeat
    pull me out of shock.
    She didn’t know
    what her hands were:
    she folded them. I asked her
    was there a place
    where there was no world.
    She didn’t know
    what a voice was: her lips
    were the shape of a...
  • Poem
    By Anne Waldman
    I wore a garland of the briar that put me now in awe

    I wore a garland of the brain that was whole

    It commanded me, done babbling

    And I no more blabbed, spare no lie

    Tell womanhood she shake off pity

    Tell the man...
  • Poem

    poetry-magazine

    Listening

    By David Ignatow
    You wept in your mother's arms
    and I knew that from then on
    I was to forget myself.

    Listening to your sobs,
    I was resolved against my will
    to do well by us
    and so I said, without thinking,
    in great panic, To do wrong
    in one's own...
  • Poem
    By Sophie Jewett
    The leaves talked in the twilight, dear;
       Hearken the tale they told:
    How in some far-off place and year,
       Before the world grew old,

    I was a dreaming forest tree,
       You were a wild, sweet bird
    Who sheltered at the heart of me
       Because the north wind...
  • Poem
    By John Fuller
    Sleep little baby, clean as a nut,
    Your fingers uncurl and your eyes are shut.
    Your life was ours, which is with you.
    Go on your journey. We go too.

    The bat is flying round the house
    Like an umbrella turned into a mouse.
    The moon...
  • Poem
    By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    When they did greet me Father, sudden Awe
    Weigh'd down my spirit! I retired and knelt
    Seeking the throne of grace, but inly felt
    No heavenly visitation upwards draw
    My feeble mind, nor cheering ray impart.
    Ah me! before the Eternal Sire I brought
    The unquiet...
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