Stillborn
what did Death incubate
in our younger son that -
born dead but still dumb-thumbed
the blank socket blacker
than if eyed his bow-boned
flesh a cold porphyry
- the mere chook of a babe
transubstantiated
into the gravity well
of a No we can’t escape
from someone who had been
pluperfected boy
I am not the mother
unforgetting her child
the angry two year old
shown dead obscenity
yet the sucked thumb
in the soft maw
of your demise
always stings my eyes
Blackwells
Oxford 13 July 2010.