Announcing the birth of our sweet Mary

Mary, squealing, slithers through the birth canal,

Churning red, a wake in her bloom:

The doctors had to cut – “A head

Like this is rare, is rare indeed” –

Opening the tube, snipping, clamping both.

Mary, accustomed to Mozart,

Subtle Stravinsky, Beethoven

Beauteous, bubbling in, through and past

The lifeline, is shocked:

                                    The sterile

Stainless steel stings, she shudders, cries.

‘My sweet!’ arms reach and gather, hold

Against the still rising breast, warm,

Warming;

               Sweet Mary stills and steels,

Opening declares, “I am not Prufrock,

Altogether am another Berry

Metres rhyming with my own clock -

I have no need to suckle at the breast

Dreaming of the tides, the penised womb -

Shall I walk tall, taller,

Equal, unequalled;

The world spinning its strange axis,

Spindle cast from every moment every heart

That runs with and without Mary.”