Poem for a Daughter

"I think I`m going to have it,"
I said jokingly between the pains.
The midwife rolled competent
sleeves over corpulent milky arms.
"Dear, you never have it,
we deliver it."
A judgement years proved so true.
Certainly I`ve never had you

as you still have me,..
Why does a mother need a daughter?
Heart`s needle, hostage to fortune,
freedom`s end. Yet nothing`s more perfect
than that bleating, razor sharped cry
that delivers a mother to her baby.
The bloodcord snaps that held
their sphere together. The child,
tiny and alone, creates the mother.

A woman`s life is her own
until it is taken away
by the first particular cry.
Then she is not alone
but part of the premises
of everything there is:
a time, a tribe, a war.
When we belong to the world
we become what we are.

Freight, Maura Dooley

I am the ship in which you sail,
little dancing bones,
your passage between the dream
and the waking dream,
your sieve, your pea-green boat.
Ill pay whatever your ferry needs,
and you, whose history already charted
in a rope of cells,be tender to
those other unnamed vessels
who will surprise you one day,
tug-tugging, irresistible,
and float you out beyond your deapth,
where youll look down, puzzled, amazed.

Robert Frost The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanter wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Homme olen teel.

Kandes endas lootust
leida inimene
ilma kelleta ma ei suuda elada
ja põues, ihu ligi neid kes kallid

Tühi valge leht
killuke sillerdavat rõõmu

Täpiga.

Fleur Adcock - Things

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

Amanda Dalton - How to Disappear

First rehearse easy things.
Lose your words in a high wind,
Walk in the dark on an unlit road,
Observe how other people mislay keys.
Their diaries, new umbrellas.
See what it takes to go unnoticed
In a crowded room. Tell lies:
“I love you. I`ll be back in half an hour.I`m fine”

Then childish things.
Stand very still behind a tree,
Become a cowboy, say you`ve died,
Climb into wardrobes, breathe on a mirror
Until there`s no one there, and practice magic,
Tricks with smoke and fire –
A flick of the wrist and the victim`s lost
His watch, his wife, his ten pound note. Perfect it.
Hold your breath a little longer every time.

The hardest things.
Eat less, much less, take a wow of silence.
Learn the point of vanishing, the moment
Embers turn to ash, the sun falls down,
The sudden white –out comes.
And when it comes again – it will-
Just walk at it, walk into it, and walk,
Until you know that you`re no longer
Anywhere.

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