Adrienne Rich — Night-Pieces: For a Child

1. *The Crib* You sleeping I bend to cover. Your eyelids work. I see your dream, cloudy as a negative, swimming underneath. You blurt a cry. Your eyes spring open, still filmed in dream. Wider, they fix me-- --death's head, sphinx, medusa? You scream. Tears lick my cheeks, my knees droop at your fear. Mother I no more am, but woman, and nightmare. 2. *Her Waking* Tonight I jerk astart in a dark hourless as Hiroshima, almost hearing you breathe in a cot three doors away. You still breathe, yes-- and my dream with its gift of knives, its murderous hider and seeker, ebbs away, recoils. back into the egg of dreams, the vanishing point of mind. All gone. But you and I-- swaddled in a dumb dark old as sickheartedness, modern as pure annihilation-- we drift in ignorance. If I could hear you now mutter some gentle animal sound! If milk flowed from my breast again...