【by Grace Fangmann】

Blessed is the womb that bore thee; bearing about
A body hardened without bones, bloody without blood.
Six-to-seven months spent stitching him together, then
Staring, sun-struck, at the stars, eyeing evermore up.
The rough cliff, on the hillside by the creek, raw.
Woman, behold thy son! And she beheld him.
She places her hand where the chest should be:
Whatever he saith unto you, do it, and she shall.
Harboring the honey in the hollow near her heart,
She draws him down to the drear depths of herself.
Heretics detest a human at his birth; then after what fashion
Can they love anybody? Loath to leave him lying there
On the lichen, she listens to silver slitherings of stream
Against stone, the unrelenting rush of the river.
She dredged him up from that dark place,
Ordered his organs and lengthened his limbs,
Grew him from something smaller than a seed, and yet now he stays so
Still.
Born to darkness drear,
His eyes shall never see;
His mother’s arms a bier,
Angelic guide she’ll be.