Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, RACHEL MOURNETH, by CORINNE HUNTINGTON JACKSON


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RACHEL MOURNETH, by                    
First Line: Where are my babes, husband, where are my babes?
Last Line: But—god—where are my babes?
Subject(s): Children; Parents; Youth; Childhood; Parenthood


Where are my babes, husband, where are my babes?
They frighten me, these three, near-grown, almost man and woman,
Huntingtons returned from Lake Shetek and camp tonight
Fresh filled with the wine of an initial straying from our roof—
And he, Merwin the younger, home from the East, competently sapient
After climbing mountains and kneeling before shrines of an older commonwealth
Looking with avid sixteen year eyes through Harrod's stockade
And standing at the fireplace which knew earliest the Nation's first
Martyr—
And she, Corinne-Ruth, who bears my name in hyphenated indissolubility
With that of her, who will never know age's paralysis of body and mind—
She, my daughter, Martha-Mary, who takes from off my shoulders
Those homely, real tasks which the Word ascribes to the mother of the house
That make one above ruby in price. Ironically, I ask, "What price a useless
mother?"
They talk, self reliant, all confident, A Youth's Triumvirate,
Stirring old confidence and old pride within me, as they three,
Huntingtons and Rowens, long gone, beneath a father's alias, now know life
again.
But—God—where are my babes?





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