HAIL  MARY  

Poem for Christmas Day - December 25, 2014

PRAYER FOR A NEW MOTHER

The things she knew, let her forget again --

The voices in the sky, the fear, the cold,

The gaping shepherds, and the queer old men

Piling their clumsy gifts of foreign gold.

Let her have laughter with her little one;

Teach her the endless, tuneless songs to sing,

Grant her her right to whisper to her son

The foolish names one dare not call a king.

Keep from her dreams the rumble of a crowd,

The smell of rough-cut wood, the trail of red,

The thick and chilly whiteness of the shroud

That wraps the strange new body of the dead.

Ah, let her go, kind Lord, where mothers go

And boast his pretty words and ways, and plan

The proud and happy years that they shall know

Together, when her son is grown a man.

                                                                  

© Dorothy Parker