Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CRY OF THE CRANE, by JANET B. MONTGOMERY MCGOVERN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CRY OF THE CRANE, by                    
First Line: The woman had borne me a child
Last Line: With my child in her arms?
Subject(s): Cranes (birds); Death - Children; Desolation; Pain; Death - Babies; Suffering; Misery


THE woman had borne me a child;
I had laughed and gone my way.
She cried to me in her agony; her desolation.
I rode away untouched; my heart was turned to stone.
The sight of the new born child—my own—did not move me.

Why, then, did the cry of the crane,
Startled, as I rode past the swamp at midnight,
After an evening of roistering,
Open my heart to an understanding
Of that woman's suffering,
Make me feel her soul as my own,
Make me turn, shamed and stricken,
And ride to the hut where she lay dying
With my child in her arms?





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