still, birth

Still, Birth 

For they were deep in the earth and what is possible took hold

                                                                                                Orpheus and Eurydice

                                                                                                Jorie Grahm

Something of you has to die to go down that far

into the basalt of a dust so dark so thick it numbs

the lungs, it presses on the back of the tongue

like drying lava in the throat of those who don’t remember

or know enough to close their mouths.  I’m in

my first and really my only labor and all

the months coming up to it, the swell of my belly so

white and tight it reminds me of an antelope

in mid flight where all that could be

seen was so hollow it was sahara camouflage.

and once my son’s ball of a hand brought itself

across the sky of his red room as if to say LOOK!

LOOK AT ALL THIS!   IT’S GOING TO BE TOUGH TO GIVE

IT ALL UP.  And it was.   It was tough.  Once it all

started to liquefy and stream out the only possible

end of the line I was made to lay down to rest

at the lip of it and the Orpheus in me

with my strings and winding sheet set about

to seduce the hounds of hell to let me

pass.  They growled and rippled against their ribs

and stood up on end and pawed and clawed and lapped

at, at, at, the salt and water at the song of it seeping

between my knees and rising off the lyre and finally I walked on in 

and I walked for hours, hours among and around cables

of veins and caves of all the others, babies who were

almost born, all the tried and tired who were the shades

of who would make a stay of it for ever and ever, those

unborn unformed babies (a man I’d rather not name made

one for me and he bled out of me in a public rest-

room and I knew he'd never have claimed him made

that way and razed and Fuck he tried and I was

a long time walking by, a long long time seeing 

and walking by my winding sheet my lyre my throat closing

to only the highest notes so when I arrived

at the foot of my own bed with all my dead one

was rising up one was loitering one was listening

one was asking me one was dying one was only no one

and never would be and I had a hard time deciphering

the one who wanted to be.  Maybe it was my turning

away maybe I’d come into the wrong grotto and I heard

WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! YES, WAIT!

Orpheus was told not to turn around.  It was his only

Rule.  And he wanted to he loved so much he couldn’t

resist.  His Eurydice followed voiceless as a shadow.

If only he’d watched that shadow the whole way out.

if only he’d read about Medusa.  If only he didn’t need

to confirm the flesh.  If only he’d stepped

out into the light and been blinded so that when

he did turn back he couldn’t see.  He could pour himself

down the hollow of her pupil and feel the mouth

of the cave filled all at once and all at once not empty out.

Having a baby is like this, don’t you think?  Of going

ax and shovel into the mine, of digging and lifting

and holding the light to the vein the vein that goes

back and back and back and forward and forward?  The wax

in the light in the fist is thick.  The wick is tough as cat-

gut, it is thick with song and when you come to the end?

Listen, it changes.  Some come to draw breath.

Some come oh some come to the edge and stay

still.  They’ve been seen and suddenly they can’t

breathe.  They irradiate their custom’s cold blue.  They are

held dead as hair.  They are beautiful but can’t be

taken.  And Orpheus, before he goes mad, drops

his winding sheet and goes out ahead of it all, naked,

singing, singing, the cave mouth closing over him

like an eclipse on an elliptical strip.  A Mobius.