silver naked woman mother
"On first cry I remembered and forgot and did believe." -Muriel Rukeyser
Night Feeding
by Muriel Rukeyser
Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death
I lay there dreaming and my magic head
remembered and forgot. On first cry I
remembered and forgot and did believe.
I knew love and I knew evil:
woke to the burning song and the tree burning blind,
despair of our days and the calm milk-giver who
knows sleep, knows growth, the sex of fire and grass,
renewal of all waters and the time of the stars
and the black snake with gold bones.
Black sleeps, gold burns; on second cry I woke
fully and gave to feed and fed on feeding.
Gold seed, green pain, my wizards in the earth
walked through the house, black in the morning dark.
Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief,
my head of dreams deeper than night and sleep.
Voices of all black animals crying to drink,
cries of all birth arise, simple as we,
found in the leaves, in clouds and dark, in dream,
deep as this hour, ready again to sleep.
"Night Feeding" from The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006.
Art: Galatea, Max Klinger, 1906, Cast silver; marble
Creative Invitation
“Write a poem about your mother’s kitchen. Put the oven in it, and also something green, and something dead. You are not in this poem, but some female relation–aunt, sister, close friend–must walk into the kitchen during the course of the poem.”
—From Rita Dove’s contribution to The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach, edited by Robin Behn and Chase Twitchell, Harper Perennial, 1992