Judith Wright

A day or two after my daughter was born, I came home late after spending the day at the hospital with my wife and little girl. It was a really strange, euphoric time, where everything felt new and unknown. I slumped in front of the tv, and started watching a show about Judith Wright, an Australian poet. I am not particularly a huge poetry fan, but I found myself really captivated and moved. There was this one poem that was read out, and it floored me, and I got teary. It was about a mothers' response to her new baby, and it just seemed to me absolutely beautiful.

After the show I had a look through our books, and was surprised to find a book of her poetry. I am not sure where it came from, but I think it may have been my grandads'-- when he died in 1996 I got some of his old books. Anyway, that particular poem was in there, and I was so happy and moved to have found this amazing gem at a time when it would mean so much to me. This is it:

Woman to Child --Judith Wright

You who were darkness warmed my flesh

where out of darkness rose the seed.

Then all a world I made in me;

all the world you hear and see

hung upon my dreaming blood.

There moved the multitudinous stars,

and cloured birds and fishes moved.

There swam the sliding continents.

All time lay rolled in me, and sense,

and love that knew not its beloved.

O node and focus of the world;

I hold you deep within the well

you shall escape and not escape-

that mirrors still your sleeping shape;

that nurtures still your crescent cell.

I wither and you break from me;

yet though you dance in living light

I am the earth, I am the root,

I am the stem that fed the fruit,

the link that joins you to the night.