Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WE UNBORN, by JAMES OPPENHEIM


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WE UNBORN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I awake: / midnight, star-shouldered, is leaning over me
Last Line: I am thy unborn, mother, moving toward the morn of my nativity.
Subject(s): Birth; Life; Child Birth; Midwifery


I

I AWAKE:
Midnight, star-shouldered, is leaning over me.

I must to my desk, and light the lamp, and stare at the flesh of my hands and legs:
Marveling to breathe and be alive.

I open the window: I lean out in the dark.

Stars! shall you answer my cry tonight?
Earth! shall you turn to the call of your son?
Where is the answerer? Where are the lips of the midnight?
Oh, world, my beloved, whisper to me!

Surely my love for you has been welcome in the darkness of the night:
Surely, Mother, the asking child shall be taught:
Though I am little in the flesh, am I not large in the love of my heart?


II

I sit at my desk:
I take the eye of Science and spy out the endless ether floating with worlds,
But of all those stars, those numberless millions beneath and above,
Only the little hasty Earth under my feet.

Millions of the sprawling bodies of men clothe like a sea the slopes of this planet,
But from all that naked flesh lying on the globe,
Here do I rise, not one of them: but I,
Myself...

III

I take the wings of thought,
Up from the Earth I soar, I scale the skies quicker than light,
And the planet whirls to a moon beneath my feet,
And drops through the gulfs, a stone,
And dwindles to a star...
Still spreads the Milky Way ages above the reach of my fingers,
And all the sides of the amphitheatre of Eternity hold tiers on tiers of the far stars,
And the monstrous abyss is scattered with a sowing of stars,
And looping its twinkling sun, the grain of the Earth is shining...
But there is the body I left: sitting in the narrow room:
Writing at the desk:
It pauses: the face lifts: the eyes stare in the lamplight:
It questions... it questions!

I drop:
I am back in my room: I am at this desk:
Tut! skies? A picture hanging on the immense walks of my mind:
The Earth is a curious nugget in the palm of my hand:
I am the sustaining and enfolding ether of the universe!

IV

I gaze at the ash of my cigar:
I become smaller than a pin-point: I climb inside the ash:
Lo, a world immense and miraculous as the star-sown universe!
I am standing in the spinning of atom-worlds,
I am pausing in the rising and setting of innumerable suns,
I am lost in the fleeing of dead gray moons in the dark...

I laugh: I fleck off the ash: it scatters:
And lo, I am still here, face to face with Self.

V

Ah, not that one thing is more miraculous than another,
But that somehow, struck from this mass and motion, not you nor the sun,
But I, I am here, in the center and thick of it:
This torch of a body with a brain shedding invisible light:
This Self, this secret cave I may retire to:
This paradox of outer appearance and inner perception:
This net that catches stars and people as if they were fish in the infinite sea:
This strainer wherethrough all tides of life pass, leaving deposits:
This tool working on the world: this flame burning into the beings of others:
This lover and hater casting light and shadow:
This creature: this creator:
This dwarf: this god:
This is the dumb-mouthed miracle my questions are shattered on!

VI

With all the heavens to choose from:
I that may have dropped once through the Milky Way,
Sky to sky falling,
How did I ever pick, not only the Earth,
Poor little brown ball, ever half-dark and half-wintry,
But that infinitesimal pair, that woman and man,
In the quaint hill-house at the head of the rambling street,
And take on -- I that had measured the heavens --
This form that now is bowed at this desk, writing this song of questionings?

VII

The room swims out on space:
And I see that the finger of greatness touches my fore-head:
And that size is nothing: experience is all.

For the kiss of my beloved shrinks night to the rift of her lips,
And the death of my child darkens sun and moon in the firmament,
And my heart's song turns to an echo the large music of the spheres,
And my spirit's dream makes the heavens the shadow of my gliding feet.

VIII

I am as a wave fleeing before the flood of the ages:
The rush of the ocean-river pushes me on: it lifts creatively through me:
It yet shall sweep me out into the night.

Oh, Ocean, eddying with spindrift of stars and moons,
Oh, Mother-Ocean, how did you beget me?

And now the voice of the Ocean rolls into song in the channels of my heart:

IX

"I am the Mother:
I am the Ocean shaped of the waters of life:
My body is the spiraling torrents of Life across Eternity:
Out of the mouth of darkness I came pouring,
And down through night I descended, a child of waters,
A singing girl whose body grew hollow with the drifts of the suns...
For the nebula of my childishness was shot with dreams,
And I eddied toward the light that opens in your mind,
And I shaped toward the love that lies in your heart,
And I groped toward division into millions of gods,
The one made many...

"In a fury I have grown: ages but the crusts I have broken through:
Skies but the hollowness in the depths of my waters wherethrough I have sent my strength.
Suns but pods I have burst, scattering seeds of planets:
Earth but a bud of mist that opened before my yearning into hills:
And the hills, mating with my love, opened out into seeds,
And the seeds unfolded into animals,
And the vague-brained animals blossomed into man:
And still I grow: through you, I grow:
You in your little room somewhere suspended in the sky-egg of the stars:
That egg, the womb of your Mother!

"Son: my beloved!
I am the Mother:
And though your body is hidden within me, I lift through you, you lift through me:
For I am the Ocean of life dividing into millions of channels:
You are one of the channels:
Together we innumerable waters pour through the heavens,
And there shall be many minglings until we grow into gods:
Growing forever through torment, travail and love:
Reaching toward the deaths that are births:
And you are that part of me that is creative as I:
Your will is on the reins of the stars even as mine is upon them:
Created, you have become a creator.

"Son: my beloved!
Love death, the releaser:
Give yourself grown to the outward-opening gates:
Pass from the sun-woven littleness of the heavens
To the spaces of my arms:
Be born! be born! Many and many await you!"

X

Star-shouldered midnight! Room solid about me!
Flesh of my hand holding the pausing pen!
How here, cooped in, shall I realize the vision?

Lo, I will bag the stars, clapping the far millions of them in:
This scoop is the little womb of the Mother.

I will recede in phantasy a million years back
And stand in the sun-fire from which I sprang,
And swim the dark river of my life up the ages:
That river is the flowing blood of the Mother.

I will take a string and hold one end of it on the Earth
And one end touching the seven high Pleiades,
And I will describe a circle around the Earth:
This huge sphere of skies is but an egg in the body of the Mother.

XI

Mother:
Oh, thou reaching me through thy body with life-blood and love:
So deep within thee I bide: so thoroughly thou growest through me:
So thoroughly I grow through thee:
That though the slant of infinity finds me as a mote of flesh on the mote of a world,
The heavens are but feeders of my growth and the Earth is my supper before the night of death:
The ages of thine agony and mine are the pains of my growing:
They that love me and they that hate me are thy hands shaping me:
And the streets are the running track of my soul.

Yea, these people are thyself and myself, Mother:
Through a million years we have been poured through each other:
Through gate after gate of the human Mothers I have come
Up the alley of the ages: often a mother myself...
Oh, generations, we have passed through each other!
Oh, houses of the flesh, we have dwelt in each other, heart within heart!
Oh, people, it is for this I am drawn to you with such unsearchable love!
This is the mass of blended life the Mother is growing through.

XII

Mother, may I not well sing the amazing song of life?
Oh, may I not well lift the song of my adoration?
This gift is too great for the heart of me so tiny and throbbing:
Bear me on thy tides and pour through me into great and unwithheld creations and love:
Let my lips in the darkness bear witness to thee:
Let my works be thy works through the toil of my hands:
Let me go forth in the day dawning, dropping the stars of thy heavens on the darkened streets:
I am thy son, and I would have thee take joy in me:
I am thy unborn, Mother, moving toward the morn of my nativity.




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