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. News 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
Effacenent 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 Victoriani nitghtgown.
Your mouth opens clean 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 lake balloons.
Sylvia Plath
