an ordinary, every day event. . .perhaps

[kagomeshuko.livejournal.com]

The Surrounding Grace

I've nothing clever to say
about this
most ordinary of events,
a progress
common as desire.

Had some strange, bright wish,
the kind that fames out
one's wit and name, occurred,
I'd have wished it
for this flesh
fragile as a yolk,
these bones,
finer than a quail's.

But none did, and so
I find the wish I wish
in a cliché, the third of a cliché,
the dullest prose: I hope
my child will be healthy.
Money I can give it,
and happiness finally
is always singular.

I'm nearly forty, though,
accustomed to myself,
to wife, work and the stuff
of routine. And now
to let swim into my address
and concern a thing
to worry up whole years,
decades, the rest
of what I've got
is need's strangest
quirking of me yet.

Time, that soil of lust,
of greed's multiplication,
may set us apart, wither
love down, and make you dream
of other fathers, other names.
But I'd have you difficult
and dark, as hateful
as my parents said I was,
to have you sweet
and slow, unable to catch
the strange, bitter grace
you sonn will enter into.

~ John Wood