Child Burial by Paula Meehan

Your coffin looked unreal

Fancy as a wedding cake.

 

I chose your grave clothes with care,

your favorite stripey shirt,

 

your blue cotton trousers.

They smell of woodsmoke, of October

 

your own smell there too.

I chose a gansy of handspun wool,

 

warm and fleecy for you. It is

so cold down in the dark.

 

No light can reach you and teach you

the paths of wild birds,

 

the names of the flowers,

the fishes, the creatures.

 

Ignorant you must remain

of the sun and its work,

 

my lamb, my calf, my eaglet,

my cub, my kid, my nestling,

 

my suckling, my colt. I would spin

time back, take you again

 

within my womb, your amniotic lair,

and further spin you back

 

through nine waxing months

to the split seedling moment

 

you chose to be made flesh,

word within me.

 

I’d cancel the love feast

the hot night of your making.

 

I would travel alone

to a quiet mossy place,

 

you would spill from me into the earth

drop by bright red drop.